"I think I've found my way. I feel comfortable with what I do despite a thousand and one obstacles, despite precarity. I come from a working-class family, but I haven't wanted to jump through the hoops of dedicating all my energy and time to a job I don't like, that would make me feel bad about myself." Carla Pérez Vas sips her non-alcoholic beer –"I stopped drinking recently, because I think I've drunk enough"– and, leaning on the bar, lets herself be carried away by the rhythms of Alanis Morrissette's All I really want.
Intense, "because for me there's no other way to live life," as a child she became imbued with flamenco culture watching her aunts sing in the Hermandad Rociera de Mataró. To that was added "that first season of Operación Triunfo which, at five years old, made me want to sing." This is how the singer, guitarist, composer, and photographer began to sing and dance. To let music speak through her body and vocal cords, soaking each song with her character and gesture. With her soul.
The guitar soon joined the equation "out of the need to be able to provide my songs with musical accompaniment." Her parents took her to a Cash Converters one Saturday "and gave me a 42-euro Spanish guitar that I still often use to compose and that, no matter how many others I may acquire, is always there."
When she was sixteen, her friend Jazz Rodríguez –daughter of Ramón Rodríguez, from The New Raemon– gave her a book that would change everything: Just kids, where Patti Smith recounts her adventures before achieving stardom, in that pre-punk and crazy New York of the 60s and 70s. "Following that book is when I told Jazz 'come on, let's start a band'." Thus, in 2013, when they weren't even of legal age, Mourn was born: one of the Catalan bands with the greatest international projection. A dream that Carla, Jazz and her sister Leia and Uri Font have been wide awake dreaming for twelve years.
Reconstruction and family
"For me, Mourn is like my family. If it weren't, we wouldn't keep doing what we do, it wouldn't make sense." Carla Pérez Vas is categorical. Family is very important, and she knows what she's talking about. "I lost my father to Covid and, shortly after, from one day to the next, my grandmother also died." It was the 2021-2023 biennium, a hell after which the artist admits without much hesitation that she is rebuilding herself. "Grief is not something you have to overcome. You simply learn to live with it and reflect on everything that has happened. I think that as a society we lack that, being less evasive, less addicted to social media, and reasoning more about the things that have happened to us and that have shaken us."In this sense, it gives the impression that Jazz, Leia and Uri are, in some way, an extension of her family. Human warmth that embraces Carla on and off stage. A bond that not even exhausting tours through the United States, Japan and all of Europe, as well as recordings of albums, songs and showcases, have been able to break. Nor will they be able to.
Now they present Letra ligada (Montgrí), the sixth album of their career, and the first with which they dare to compose in Spanish, taking off the linguistic mask of English, however well it worked. The artist's mission is always to take risks and look forward. Otherwise, this dream, this family, perhaps would not make sense either.
The new LP arrives two months after Carla's solo debut, Fi, a self-produced album for the defense of whose repertoire she is preparing concerts for the coming months. At the same time, she has just sat for the first time at the controls of an album's production, "Paula Felices' first, which I love and which will be released in 2026," she announces with an enthusiasm that grabs and doesn't let go. Unable to stay still – and no need to – she is also preparing her first photography book, a discipline she works on mainly in analog format and, often, linked to the world of music: "building visual narratives that fit the songs and ideas of other artists."
In any case, the best city in the world
Four years ago, the parishioner moved to Barcelona from her native Argentona. "I went from living practically in the mountains, in the middle of silence, to coming here, and it was a brutal change. Its noise, its rhythm, which perhaps is not as frantic as that of other cities like New York, but much more than that of an inland Maresme town… It's something that sometimes I handle better and other times worse, because it is true that there isn't a single place where you can be alone and in silence."Although she doesn't believe she will live forever in Barcelona, after visiting so many with her band, she can determine that, despite its problems and pending issues, it is the best city in the world. "I love walking through the streets of this big town, looking for details, observing the architecture, the buildings…". Her gaze shines with photographic brilliance, as she finishes the last sip of her beer and, in the background, the notes of Alanis's Perfect underscore her words.
--- What you'll also love is our gastronomic offer. Dinner time is approaching and we can tempt you with tapas, raciones, bocatas or our menu…
Carla Pérez Vas smiles, shrugging her shoulders and looking at the effects of dusk through the Bar's window.
"Actually, I don't usually give much importance to food ---she replies---. I'm rather basic, so I'll order a tortilla pincho." She takes a few seconds and, more animated by continuing the conversation than by the tapa, adds: "but yes, give me another non-alcoholic beer."