Q&A: With Sincerity That Wraps Around You Warmly, Atalhos Talks Musical References & More
FULL OF WARMTH AND LIGHTNESS WITH HINTS OF MYSTERY — the Brazilian band Atalhos is one of the best artists I have come across. As the music editor, I listen to roughly 30 artists each day as they submit their tracks to us, and Atalhos is one that I immediately became obsessed with.
The band not only combines multiple elements from genres like indie-rock, dream pop, shoegaze, psychedelia, and way more, but they also create this sense of another reality within their music: it’s just something to completely get lost in.
Their track “Te Encontrei em SP” is filled with soul-esque sonic elements and the beautiful vocals of Delfina Campos, that, when combined, create a groovy and grabbing song that fills you up with warmth and sincere relief. As they release new singles, their sound gets better and more unique. Their past projects are all different yet share an inherent similarity, and their special sound somehow lingers throughout it all — including the feeling that their music invokes. Inspired by bands like Wilco and artists like War on Drugs, they are the perfect amount of my favorite genres and artists, but in a way that doesn’t take away from their originality.
As their presence grows in the US, the band lets us in on what they have been up to, their music-making process, literature connections, and more. Read down below to get to know Atalhos.
LUNA: Hello! To start off, I just want to say I’m really excited to interview you guys. How has 2021 been so far for you guys?
ATALHOS: Hi! It's a pleasure for us, thank you. Well, 2021 began like the year of hope — we were very confident that this year would be different from the past year, but things went bad here in Brazil, so we had to use the first months here working at home, making "Zoom" and "meets" with our partners, and I guess we had, at least, the opportunity to rethink our plans — our releasing plans and stuff like that. I would say that the pandemic made us more organized as a band.
LUNA: I first listened to your song “Te Encontrei em SP” when you guys were featured on both of our playlists! I really love your sound on it — it has a lot of unique elements that are pulled off easily and flow well with every aspect of the song. Sonically, how would you say your sound has evolved from past albums?
ATALHOS: I'm glad you like it! We wanted to create a new kind of sound in this album and it started from the beginning … For the first time, I wrote the songs using a guitar instead of an acoustic guitar. The new songs are full of guitar-picking, layers of synths and keys, and acoustic drums making beats as it were electronic drums. The past albums are more like folk albums, with the acoustic guitar as a protagonist, but now I would say that our songs have more guitars and synths.
LUNA: What does your recording process look like?
ATALHOS: I began recording in Sao Paulo — we did the drums, guitars, vocals etc., and then I sent the files to Ives Sepulveda, a friend who lives in Santiago, Chile. I love the sound he puts in his band, The Holydrug Couple, and I knew he was the right guy to insert some synths and keys in our songs. I spent several weeks in Chile working with him and then we went to Buenos Aires to do the mixing at Studio Panda, a very classic studio in Argentina. And months later I had the beautiful opportunity to do the mastering with Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound. It was amazing and I learned a lot.
LUNA: Although there is a language barrier as you guys sing in Portugese, your music is very enjoyable sonically through instrumentals that allows it to be enjoyed globally. What do you hope those outside of Brazil take away from your music?
ATALHOS: I think that when the music is enjoyable and cool, everyone can have a good time and there's no obligation for them to understand the lyrics. As you said, the sensations that one song reveals in each person is very particular, very idiosyncratic. Our dreams, as a band, continue to be modest, and I guess they are the dreams of the majority of the bands. We would like to play live in cool venues, travel to beautiful places playing our songs, and have attentive listeners. The best part of releasing a song is when you receive sincere feedback and you know that your song was part of the life of someone else.
LUNA: I saw one of your songs named as “The Bell Jar,” which made me think of Sylvia Plath’s book, and then I read that you guys have a lot of literary references in your music! Which I think is really cool. There are a lot of artists who use other formats of media as inspiration but you guys use it more as a condition. Can you elaborate on your recurrent literary references in your music?
ATALHOS: Yes, as you said, for us it is more like a condition because we always were very inspired by the books we used to read. I had a bookshop when I was 20 (now I’m 36) and I was always reading, so we used to put titles of books we liked in the songs we were creating and this is also a cool thing, I guess, for the listeners, because the experience of listening to a song doesn't have to finish when the music's over. I mean, as a listener, I would love to go after the book I knew in the title of a song I liked, you know? However, we don't want to have this image of a very intellectual band, like our songs were so hermetic, no — all the references are put as natural as possible and in a very sincere way.
LUNA: Inspiration can be from anything as we stated before. In your album, Onde a Gente Morre, your music was heavily influenced by the band Wilco. For your upcoming projects, are there any inspirations sonically?
ATALHOS: When we were recording Onde A Gente Morre, we were very inspired by the albums of Wilco, and not just the aesthetics of the albums, but also the recording technique they used, especially in Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I remember we watched more than twice the documentary showing how they recorded this album. For the upcoming projects, of course, there are lots of inspirations — I could say The War on Drugs and Destroyer were the bands we listened to the most when conceiving the idea of this new album, but we're always investigating new sounds, and we're very attentive to what Latin artists are doing nowadays.
LUNA: Your music video for your single “Te Encontrei em SP” is like a cinematic dream of warmness. The use of color is beautiful in it. What inspired that visual element and are there any other visual elements you guys would like to try out soon?
ATALHOS: We are cinephiles, and like literature, cinema was always an inspiration for us, so when we are making a music video, we love to experiment with visual things. The colors remind us of the colors of our covers on Spotify, and we wanted to maintain this kind of identity. It's very important to have this coherent "look" in each piece of work we release so they [converse] with the whole identity of the album.
LUNA: What was your experience filming the music video?
ATALHOS: The video was shot in Asunción, Paraguay. I was in the city with Delfina Campos and we met this girl, Silvana — she is a video producer and put us in contact with Marcelo Guido, a director, and after a few meetings we decided to shot freely by the streets of Asunción, but trying not to be obvious and not to reveal the city, so as a result, the images seem to be shot in a utopian city, and gave us the sense of dreaming that we wanted to have in the video.
LUNA: A fun (slightly difficult) question: What five records would you take with you to a deserted island?
ATALHOS: Difficult question! But I can choose five: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (Wilco), Lost in the Dream (The War on Drugs), Giant Steps (Coltrane), Transa (Caetano Veloso), and Bocanada (Gustavo Cerati).
LUNA: Thank you so much for talking with us! To wrap it up, what should we be expecting from Atalhos this year? (New projects, singles, music videos, shows, etc.)
ATALHOS: Thank you so much for having us! We should be releasing new versions of the latest singles and also a new single next semester, and then we're gonna release the full album at the beginning of the next year. See you, take care!
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