The relationship between Lucy Patane and Paula Maffia It is traversed by comings and goings. Not only personally, but also artistically. After joining forces in The Thing Shows, The Fools and a few more sound laboratories, two of the best post-2001 Argentine singer-songwriters returned to embody in a new project: Lesbiandrama. “Las Taradas was a joke, just like La Cosa Mostra”, says Patané. “Ten years have passed since those essays and coming up with this word. We put forward the desire of what that grace generates for us.”
The brand new venture, which planted a flag in the past March 16 after leaving a EP titled the same as the duo, it is precisely a consequence of their itinerant bond. At the same time that they carried out La Cosa Mostra, in the mid-2000s, the tandem created an alternative model to the quartet: Lesbians. It was nothing more than the two of them reversing those jazzy sound themes and punk spirit in an acoustic way.
In 2019, both left an audiovisual record of Lesbiset through a performance recorded in Brandon House. And four years later, already consolidated as soloists and with a pandemic In between, the two musicians revived the idea of that format. Although this time with songs conceived or redirected for the project.
To finish giving it shape and supporting it conceptually, they found the name of his baptism in the novel Carolof Patricia Highsmith. “We found it funny that such a good and anthological book was so lightly pigeonholed,” says Maffía. “There is something of revert certain tags, as we did with Las Taradas. Appropriate what could be understood as an insult. Somehow, we ‘perform’ on a category. They are not songs of activist militancy. But we create drama, we cry, we have cats and we separate. And Patané concludes: “It is part of the artistic fact”.
Isn’t it also a militant act?
P. M.: -Our militancy is day by day. I give up the battle by going to a garden or a hospital, getting on public transport. This is not settled on a record nothing else. It would be delusional to think that a record is going to change militancy.
L. P.: -We do not compose songs from a flag. Our position on that has more to do with where we play, what event we participate in or who we support.
Volume one of Lesbiandrama is a lesbian soap opera in the age of Artificial Intelligence. Although it starts in the key of sleepy Rock, in “Trago sin tiempo”; “El dedo en el renglón” puts the Beach Boys of the album into dialogue Pet Sound with country. Next, the 15-minute listen is immersed in a topic with a tropical intention (but with an explosive ending) of the caliber of “Deranged girl.” And if that title fits the evolution of the song, “Bolero”, the track that closes the EP, is something similar to a oxymoron. Rather than delving into the bucolicism of the genre, change the pain or the cut veins for the dance floor. Without dwelling on the obvious.
This novel repertoire (in which the drummer Roki Fernández, from the group Amor Elefante), as well as some compositions that account for their society for almost 20 years, will shape the premiere of the disk, This Saturday at 8:00 p.m., at the Xirgu Espacio Untref Theater (Chacabuco 875).
-Were these songs written by four hands?
L. P.: -Two are hers, and the rest are mine. Clearly, Paula sings hers and I sing mine.
P. M.: -Not these, but the others that come yes. We have been working on the material that will appear in the second volume by Lesbiandrama. These are newer songs. They were the most worked, precisely because each one did it in the privacy of her.
-Why did you choose these and not develop the others?
-P.M.: -Intuition, validated by the gaze of the other.
-And what did this complicit situation contribute this time?
L. P.: -In the case of Paula, all you had to do was cover them. Mine already had their landscapes, but bits of lyrics were missing. We recorded them in my studio.
-Where was the limit?
L. P.: -We will never get out ridiculous. You have to know how to play Azúcar Moreno, and we don’t know how to do it. We only take items. There it is armed a little delirium. We reached a balance point that was good. Nor are they solemn songs.
P. M.: -We can laugh a little at the character we adopt to write, but without losing sight of the fact that with these songs we want to move or inspire people. The device can be humor, although it does not end in a laugh. It is not anecdotal.
-Are they inclusive or comprehensive when composing?
P. M.: -If it is for everyone, it is for no one. These songs can get out of the mood, but they are not derogatory. The text is self-explanatory. That differentiates us from the character. Why are ragpickers criticized for talking about money and drugs? because you have to understand context. In that sense, there are letters that are universal. You don’t have to be lesbians to understand them.
They emphasized humor. How did they overturn it?
P. M.: -Just as we expected: dancing and crying. Our audience didn’t need us to explain anything.
L. P.: -There is an audience that likes that this is a space to make certain types of music that we don’t do in our careers. It’s like a B-side. Some people are surprised and happy that this is going around.
Apart from being a friend, colleague, comrade and henchman, Patané acts as a babysitter in various passages of the note so that Maffía can answer. The tête à tête flows in the home of the latter, in the Barracas neighborhood. Although her street still shows signs of a Buenos Aires proletarian past, gentrification devours history around the corner. One more time. While that happens outside, inside, in the living room of that house, the artist who released the live album in February get out of here he returns his son to the recent author of the singles “Tattoo”, “Volcán” and “Come with me”. She then makes herself comfortable on the sofa, and explains how they carry the “lesbiandrama” between them. “In La Cosa Nostra, we were very young and we were very raw. Or gross”, muses the artist. “We knew we could be a team, but we had to iron out a lot of things with this role thing. It did me very well, for example, making my album and my solo issue.
-How did you realize?
L. P.: -In a medium sharp coffee that we made to smooth out rough edges, she told me that I had to face a project alone so that I feel what it is to be in charge. And I did, although many years later. But other ducks accommodated me. After 20 years, we continue to do things.
P. M.: -Today I think about it with more love and pedagogy. It seems to me that any link can be proud to choose itself, after going through an instance of possible separation. In that meeting that she talks about, instead of offending us, those words helped us to improve.
-How long have you known each other?
L. P.: -Since 2004. I was playing in a shack with a band that was hardcore punk. And among the public was Paula, because she was a friend of other music. When I finished playing, she told me that what she was doing was very Runaways. She lived in Bernal, and she had no friends who listened to that music. It was a crush. And we follow her on Fotolog.
P. M.: -Soon after, we did some rehearsals, and then we started playing together with La Cosa Mostra.
-And what led you to put together a project together at that time?
P. M.: -I had songs… After having seen Argentine Joan Jett, how could I not want to put together something with her?
–If you, Lucy, are the Argentine Joan Jett, what would be Paula’s analogy?
L. P.: -He looks like Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards… Always guys, now that I think about it. Regarding personalities, Paula is at the forefront, she has a strong character. She did not stop doing her own thing, while putting together bands. I have the feeling that I am a little new. My record came out 4 years ago, but I’m actually a good team player character. That got us going for a long time. Regarding the dynamics, I can curl up more, and she is more decisive. We put the artistic above all else. That is not easy to find nowadays, when you want to make music with another person.
Do you usually review your past?
L. P.: -It gives me joy to see those things that were typical of a moment. It makes me feel more tolerant of other people. We talk from time to time about the projects we had, and we make certain reflections.
-How do you renew the link?
L. P.: -The link is much faster. We recorded this EP in record time. We did it in two weeks.
P. M.: -I was 8 months pregnant… From an artistic and a playful point of view, we deal with references. But they are not exact.
L. P.: -Las Taradas was a bomb that got out of hand. No one thought that was going to happen. It was a secondary project to La Cosa Mostra. But it was so relevant that it ended eclipsing to our head group.
-From this revisionism, would you resurrect La Cosa Mostra and Las Taradas?
L. P.: -Medium than our modus operandi is to create and destroy. We don’t destroy La Cosa Mostra, but we send it to the cave. And Las Taradas is a complex project that involves more people. Now there is Lesbiandrama…
P. M.: -The resurrect aura is a bit like playing Frankenstein.
-Do they recycle songs or do they suffer from the Diogenes Complex?
L. P.: -I review fully, it amuses me. But I try not to sin in recycling.
P. M.: -In my case, I am constantly collecting. I do suffer from a kind of Diogenes Complex. Luckily, the pandemic It hit me pretty hard because it made me wonder what’s worth keeping. Living with space is a higher form of emancipation. A topic leads me to text sheets. I ended up putting out a book in 2021, which is a lot of shards of material that could be for a song. Everything takes unexpected forms.
-In what contrasts your way of composing?
L. P.: -I compose if something really happened to me. I am a little more coiled with the method.
P. M.: -My song has to serve so that, if the power goes out, I can continue playing it.
-What sense does the song have when ChatGPT can do it for you?
P. M.: -It seems to me that whoever identifies as an author or author has the permanent obligation to read himself or herself. It is interesting that conflict between what should be. On the other hand, there is the need to express emotionality. In tension is where the reality of an era is put into play. To the extent that a discourse is generated, it forces me to say things in a more correct way. In 10 years, this talk may be disposable.
