I remember when we started to make music we hoped we would somehow be original. Another agenda was to write songs which sounded like actual songs. This is sometimes harder than it seems. Eventually when asked if a new song was a cover or one of ours we kind of took it as a compliment – in a way it felt like we had a bit more reality about us than we’d feared.

The first thing to say about Adiós Amores, the latest Spanish group that I love, is that everything I’ve heard by them sounds like… a song. More than that, quite a few sound like great songs. But I think they’ve gone even further than us – they’ve got a preserved sense of unreality which they’re playing as a winning hand. They look like they’ve stepped off the set of a film – is it maybe Rivette’s Céline Et Julie Vont En Bateau? Like those spooky protagonists they seem tuned in to each other, co-ordinated, knowing, and mostly unsmiling.

Iman Amar and Ana Valladares don’t live in the same city, Iman lives in Granada, Ana between Sevilla and Bilbao. They don’t play many shows. I asked a Spanish friend if I’m right in thinking they’re slightly to the side of things. He said that due to geography and circumstances they have a slightly distanced aura which is exactly as I hoped – magical, outwith normal time, probably in posession of odd, unexplainable powers.

This is the first collection of their music – their first three singles (already sold out) and two new songs. It’s everything they’ve done so far. Hence the irony in calling the compilation ‘Sus mejores canciones’ (‘their best songs’). Each of their songs are unlike the others but there’s something very vivid about all of them which matches the raw art covers they favour. The first single, Charlotte, totally hooked me. It’s a low key pop gem – it’s got that weird sadness that you hear in Sandhy & Mandhy’s music or Elia y Elisabeth – it’s the sound of two close voices, although the song itself has shades of France Gall and Astrud Gilberto.

The thing is, they have so many styles and move easily between them – it’s not 1960s or 1970s retro, it’s often slightly unplaceable, it’s detached. They work in a studio in Sevilla, La Mina, with a sympathetic cast of musicians including Raúl Pérez and Guillermo Briales who help them realise their brilliant ideas. Together it feels like they’ve achieved so much so soon. The music is rich-hued, it’s really more like a mixture of cinema and music – I feel if you like Almodovar, Morricone, and Strawberry Switchblade and can imagine elements of all three in play at the same time this is probably your dream group. I have no idea what they’ll become but they’re about to start work on a studio album and I can’t wait.

With Monorail there’s really no greater pleasure than sharing something new which we hope you’ll love. I know we all feel that it’s the best part of what we do. We rely on others to introduce us to something new too and this is via the same person (Joan, Ground Control) who put us onto Deers / Hinds and Melenas. We believe that international cooperation is always the way forward and invite you to hit that buy button with supreme confidence and suprema confianza.

Thanks!

Stephen