Marta Perez - Punctual (It'S a Bit Too Late) (2017)

Known so far by his work with Acousters and with the group of Havaneras Les Anxovetes, Marta Pérez is a soloist for the "pop-folk indie, with Wilco as the first reference" - they could add, for example, the 10,000 Maniacs by Natalie Merchant - and sung entirely in English. "I like the plasticity and the loudness of English, but singing in English is also like a game, a way of being somebody else, with a costume or a mask," says this English teacher at the Official School of Languages ​​of Girona that passed the third year of career in California.

Marta Pérez is the author of the lyrics and music of the ten songs of Punctual - "After working the compositional process between the five members of Acousters, now I do exactly the songs to my liking" -, but a key piece in his The project is the producer and guitarist Jordi Bastida (Trau, Els Pets, Llumia), with whom the singer began to go to guitar lessons when he lived in Barcelona, ​​a city with which he had "a story of love and lack of love "Shaped in a song titled just Barcelona. "I lived there for a long time and I thought that I would stay for the rest of my life, but there came a time when the city no longer liked anything and wanted to go. Three years ago I'm in Girona. "

After debuting live in the fall of 2014, Marta Pérez published in January 2015 a first EP, entitled Green fields, white thoughts, with four songs recorded with the only accompaniment of the acoustic and electric guitars of Bastida. "It's a very airy and intimate album. With the guitar, Jordi knows how to create many atmospheres and colors, and above all it generates a lot of space. "In the case of Punctual, recorded in the Ground of Cornellà del Terri, there are more ingredients: the bass and bass of Pedro Campos and the drummer and percussion of Jose Benítez, who also complete the live band. In addition, Carles Camós, from Acousters (organ Hammond and piano), and their colleagues in Les Anxovetes, Tona Gafarot and Montse Ferrermoner, have collaborated on the album, making voices. Mixed by Jordi Mora and mastered by Víctor Garcia, Puntual has had a slow and long gestation for almost two years. "Actually, it's slow music, both with regard to the concept and the process of elaboration," she says.

The album opens with the most personal song, Atonement - "It's called expiation because I made a mistake and I had a great desire to atone, to apologize" - and there are also two themes based on comics: Blue smoke, in A Little Blue Smoke, by Denis Lapière and Rubén Pellejero, and The property, on The Property, by Rutu Modan, the story of a Jew who returns to Warsaw in search of an old family property lost during the war. The comic is also very present in the careful graphic design of the CD, by Júlia Quintana, who has freely interpreted the ten songs of the disc in different tracks, which include phrases extracted from the songs. Quintana has also created videos with her illustrations for all subjects.