INTERVIEW: Las Nubes

Las Nubes is the band poised to grace your summer playlist. The Miami based band has built a catalog defined by devastating pop, pulsing drums and refracting clouds of shoegaze. Spanning over several languages, their lyrics address the emotional truths of being a person— treating the mundanity of everyday life with the same poetic reverence as the big and dramatic moments, relationships and people that shape our lives. With a slate of new music and a tour on the horizon, their songs are bound to soundtrack our year. Noisescape Magazine caught up with Ale Campos & Emile Milgrim, the lead vocalist and drummer, respectfully, to discuss the genius of Patti Smith, their favorite songs of all time, and their upcoming music, including their most recent single, “Would Be” and their forthcoming record, due to release June 14th. 

Photo by Sal Rispoli

Your new song, “Would Be,” came out on April 19th. I think it is a banger and very relatable. It discusses themes of feeling like life is passing you by before you can make the most of it. Can you discuss your personal connections to the song and why you decided to make it your first single?

ALE:  Emile and I both used to work at a record store and we heard a rumor that they were doing a live action PowerPuff Girls show that Diablo Cody was directing. We were just like, “wouldn't it be cool if we wrote the theme song for it?” Apparently, it was supposed to be set in the future, them as adults, just reminiscing about how they had this childhood that was very demanding and they didn't actually get to be kids. So, that's where the inspiration originally came from. But it was also during covid and I was kind of sad as most people were during that time— I just felt like before quarantine happened, our band was on the come up and then everything shut down, killing all the momentum that we had going. With all of that happening at the same time, I could just resonate with those feelings of losing time and not being able to do things you were able to do when you were younger. Things like that.

You said that this was inspired by the PowerPuff girls, do you get a lot of inspiration from other art, specifically visual media? And where does a lot of your inspiration come from generally? Your own life, or from other art?

ALE: It depends. Emile and I have done a lot of free association wordplay when it comes to writing lyrics. Sometimes she will tell me she wrote this line and I will translate it into Spanish. 

EMILE: I get a lot of ideas - lyrical, thematic, mood ideas in general - from reading. I really like sci-fi. I really like fantasy. I really like alot of historical fiction. That stuff worms its way into my brain. I'll write down phrases from things that I read and come back to them, building around those phrases.

ALE: Yeah, I get a lot of inspiration too from reading poetry. I love how Patti Smith writes and I feel like a lot of the things that she has written, I have just bounced ideas off of. I will put myself in other people's situations. try to interpret what that feels like and go from there.

EMILE: It's funny you mention Patti Smith because I was just listening to an interview with Patti Smith today and it is already very interesting. Patti Smith is huge, she's so important.

Listening to your music, I picked up on a lot of Hole references, some Mazzy Star. But looking at your visuals, I picked up on 70s inspiration, especially in regards to  your album cover. Are there any decades in particular that inspire you?

ALE: Honestly, the 70s and 90s are my two favorite decades for rock music. It's funny because when you think about how trends cycle, it all cycles every 20 years. So it's funny to think about how I really like alot of 70s rock music but I also like alot of 90s rock music. It's because a lot of those 90s bands were taking inspiration from who they grew up listening to.

EMILE: But that begs the question, in the early aughts, who was doing power ballads? I say that because I was listening to another interview with Nancy Wilson from Heart and she was talking about how there is some stuff from the 80s that we just have to forgive them for (except for “What About Love” because that's a banger).  I think the 70s and 90s [are my favorite] too in terms of rock music. And for me, the 70s and 90s too in terms of Soul and R&B music. There's some good stuff from the 80s no doubt but a lot of drum machines in that Soul and R&B.

The lyrical content in some 70s and 80s Soul and R&B is playful and expressive in a similar way to what you guys have been putting out too. To get specific, I would love to talk about the lyrics in “Would Be.” The chorus of this song has a refrain that you both repeat over and over: “the more I give the less I get back” I was wondering if you could talk about what that lyric means to you.

ALE: I grew up listening to a lot of Emo music and I love songs that you can just scream along to. I intentionally made it repetitive and something that you can scream along to - something that people can relate to, just because it's really cathartic and it feels good to be able to yell along to one of your favorite songs. At the time, I was in a relationship with somebody in which I felt like I was putting in a lot of effort and just trying to make it work over and over and over again. Oftentimes, they just couldn't even try to meet me halfway. So that line is saying, “I feel like the more I give, I'm just not gonna get that reciprocation from that person. I'm just gonna end up draining myself at the end”. 

Miami is such an interesting and underrated music city. How has the Miami music scene influenced your sound? On the contrary, how have the sounds that you hear and the music you encounter when you're on tour influenced you?

ALE: What I love about [the Miami] music scene is we love heavy and slow music. Just like epic and loud stuff. Even if I'm writing the poppiest, catchiest, hookiest music, I want it to be loud and heavy and brutal.

EMILE: When we're writing pop music, or poppy to an extent, it's heavy, it's loud, it'll have a weird key change, and it's cool because I like how that kind of stuff can sound deceptive almost. I like music that can sound maybe happier but is actually not. Belle & Sebastian is one of my favorite bands. You listen to a Belle & Sebastian song and think, “oh this is cute” and then you really listen to it and you’re like “this is fucked up”.

ALE: I was listening to Belle & Sebastian at work and somebody was like “are you okay?” 

One thing I was struck by in your music is the riffs. The riffs are very forward in the mix and they're iconic. They're hooky and very catchy. What is the language involved in writing a hooky riff that carries a song, as I feel like you guys do that very well?

ALE:  My thing when I am writing a riff is I will start playing something, and the first thing I come up with, I’ll be like “oh, that was the first so that's too  predictable, lets try something else”. Then the second time around, I'll be like “how can I change this but still make it interesting?”  So I'll mess around with time signatures or tuning. One thing that I like to use aside from voice memos to record the riffs, a lot of the time I'll try to just remember it. I'll go to sleep and if I can remember the riff the next day, it passed the catchy test. Every song is written differently and there is no one method that we follow. We kind of try everything.

So you don't necessarily go to the lyrics first and try to get a melody afterwards, it just depends?

ALE: That’s happened before. Sometimes the riff will come first and sometimes Emile will hear a drum that would be cool to incorporate in a song. 

Do you guys have a favorite song of all time?

ALE: That's a hard one because I'm constantly changing. 

EMILE: That's hard. I have one go to that if it was like, gun to head I had to pick one, its Cocteau Twins’ “Cherry-colored funk.”

ALE: For me, definitely a Replacements song. I'm gonna go with “Unsatisfied.” That’s such a good song.

I need to listen to that song.

ALE: The whole Let It Be album start to finish is my favorite but “Unsatisfied”…

EMILE: The lyrics are also super clever with that song because they're pretty minimal but the way they are delivered [is big].

I was struck by the visual language of your work.  A lot of your album covers are very nostalgic. It seems like many of them are shot on film. What is your aesthetic language and how do you incorporate aesthetics into your music?

ALE: We love analog things and having album covers that were shot on film—

EMILE: And those are all family or extended family photos. So those are actual people we know or have known or, someone that people close to us have known, all shot on film. They are all one of a kind photos, not stock photos.

ALE: I also just love when people use old family photos when it comes to artwork because it makes you feel kind of at home and it makes you think of a time that was a little simpler.

EMILE: It also makes you think about the story behind the photo and what it could be. I really like when you're traveling around and you go to random thrift shops or junk shops and they have these stacks of old photos, and they're selling them for 50 cents a piece. I just love going through them and being like “who are these people, what are they doing, where is this, what's happening?” It’s so fun. 

ALE: It gives you a peep into other people's pasts, their lives and their stories. I think it's fun to tell stories of ourselves and our friends. We have really close relationships with our family and our friends. 

It seems like you celebrate your community in a lot of ways, like having your father in your music video for “Would Be” for example. Can you talk about his reaction to the video and the song?

ALE: The first thing he said was “but you're not in this video at all, the video needs more of you!” My dad and I have a really close bond, like we are obsessed with each other. We love eachother so much, we bro down. Soccer is his life and I just remember always watching fútbol matches with him, going to games. Just the passion behind watching a soccer game and feeling the energy of it all is so exciting and so nostalgic for me— it makes me think of my dad. I just love having [my father playing soccer] as the video because it is something that I grew up seeing him do all the time. Like that was his party trick. Anytime we are at a park or a family gathering, he always brings a soccer ball with him and he is always showing off in a way. Now he's much much older and not able to do it as well as he used to but he can still do so much. I just wanted to have something there to honor him and help him show off even more.

You are a multilingual band. Much of your music is also in Spanish. I was wondering how you guys decide when to write in Spanish versus English or is it just a natural process?

ALE: it just depends on how it will sound. A Lot of the time, we see how phonetics play into it and which words fit better in certain melodies. 

EMILE: On this new record, we have a song where the lyrics are in English but the titles are in Spanish.

ALE: We have a song in Portuguese too. The bassist that recorded the album with us is Brazilian and she wrote the lyrics and we started playing. I remember one day, I went to her house and she just sat down and I gave her words that I had in mind— she translated them into Portuguese and we started putting the pieces together. It was pretty cool. It really depends on how I'm feeling and how I want it to sound too. 

You guys have a tour coming up. Do you find creative inspiration in the transient lifestyle or is it easier to find creative inspiration when you're still?

EMILE: Touring is like another state of mind. I am a very neurotically regimented person so taking that away from me and having to put it in a tour is hard - it also affects my perception of things, my creativity, all sorts of stuff. Your sleep gets all messed up. You learn a lot of patience touring. 

ALE: I don't think I have ever written a song while on tour but I can definitely think of moods and emotions that I felt while on tour that I put into lyrics or a song. 

EMILE: Touring is emotional. It is hard. It is really difficult to just even want to pick up your instrument at all. We have a joke that we do all the driving and when we get to the venue, we are like “aw shit we still have to play the show.” “oh yeah we still have to do that thing that we're here to do”. 

ALE: For me, it is the comfort of being able to sit down and record something on Garageband. 

I've heard that when artists tour, they are so surrounded by music that sometimes they can only listen to podcasts or something not musical. Is that relatable for you guys?

EMILE: Our friend Steph who tours with us sometimes, when we get into the car after a show and we go to put something on she's like “nothing!”

ALE: I'm the same way— either nothing or podcast—  but I’m like that on a day to day as well  because I'm a music teacher.

EMILE: I liberally listen to podcasts in the car, hence hearing the Nancy Wilson interview and the Patti Smith interview today.

Can you tell me what's next for Las Nubes?

ALE: We’re putting out this record in June. We’re touring the West Coast in August [then the] East Coast in October, then, the midwest in November. We're hoping to go to Europe next year. We'd love to go back to Mexico or just go to South America.  

EMILE: We should probably write more songs!

ALE: We should write more songs. I've been writing, I have probably an album's worth of music ready to go but we just have to get together and flesh it out but yeah, a lot of touring and hopefully more stuff to come!

Las Nubes’ album 'Tormentas Malsanas' will be released on June 14th via Sweat Records & Spinda Records

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