Los Bonsáis

Indiepop’d: Los Bonsáis – Noise from Spain

It pays to check out your Twitter followers (and I don’t mean that in the police state paranoia way or creepy leering sense). But, really, it’s not a bad idea. Not only will it save you from a robot army wielding free iPads, but sometimes it puts you in the path of Spanish shoegazers brandishing guitars and powerful fuzzboxes.

Such is the case with Los Bonsáis. It only took about 30 seconds of “Es Mejor” for me to know that I had stumbled onto something I really loved. With their subtle, melodic vocals, it’s easy to place Spanish duo in the same camp as My Bloody Valentine and their variously fuzzy descendants, but the 60s surf inspired-inspired rhythms also owe a great deal to the noisier side of late 80s indiepop, like The Fizzbombs or Meat Whiplash/The Motorcycle Boy—or, in more directly relevant, contemporary terms: “like a Spanish Raveonettes” as a friend from another blog described it.

Head over to Bandcamp to check it out, I think you’ll see where we’re coming from on this. (You can also download the “Es Mejor” b/w “Un Instante” single for free there.) Of course, if you’re anything like me, you are probably thinking something along the lines of “I’ll bet they sign with Elefant soon”. I was when I listened Sunday night. I spent a good amount of time this week thinking of all the arguments I was going to make in this week’s Indiepop’d piece for why Los Bonsáis + Elefant Records is a match made in heaven only to plug this post from the band’s blog into Google Translate and find that my revelation had come to me a few hours late.

So the good news, for those of you digging the sweet noise of Los Bonsáis as much as I am, is that there will soon be a new 7” EP released as part of Elefant’s New Adventures in Pop series and one more disc to spin at your respective indiepop club nights. It would be redundant, at this point, to predict that “match made in heaven”. But it is never too late to celebrate a match well made.