Music acts that successfully capture a given moment, condensing the restless pulsations of the scene they came from, are quite the anomaly.
El Ultimo Vecino is frontman Gerard Alegre’s own personal project. It sprang out of the darkest trenches of Barcelona’s underground scene, to become shortly after a national indie sensation. With barely over a year behind them they have rushed through the vast majority of Spain’s festivals, including Barcelona’s Primavera Sound and BAM, Benicassim’s FIB, Galician Festival Do Norte, and further into Berlin and Lithuania’s Strcamp Festival. They recently played their first concert in America at Mexico City's Festival Nrmal
The vast majority of projects vindicating the 80s these last years in Spain are dangerously close to satire or parody, choosing the most kitsch side of pop acts of that decade. There are very few bands who succeed (or even try) at evoking the most melancholic spir...
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Music acts that successfully capture a given moment, condensing the restless pulsations of the scene they came from, are quite the anomaly.
El Ultimo Vecino is frontman Gerard Alegre’s own personal project. It sprang out of the darkest trenches of Barcelona’s underground scene, to become shortly after a national indie sensation. With barely over a year behind them they have rushed through the vast majority of Spain’s festivals, including Barcelona’s Primavera Sound and BAM, Benicassim’s FIB, Galician Festival Do Norte, and further into Berlin and Lithuania’s Strcamp Festival. They recently played their first concert in America at Mexico City's Festival Nrmal
The vast majority of projects vindicating the 80s these last years in Spain are dangerously close to satire or parody, choosing the most kitsch side of pop acts of that decade. There are very few bands who succeed (or even try) at evoking the most melancholic spirit of The Smiths, Orange Juice or New Order. Gerard’s debut album is an addictive exercise of straightforward pop, as euphoric in vitality as it is stirring, with tearjerker hymns and naked insights of his most personal fears.
We find ourselves before a project born under the flag of Barcelona’s underground scene, received by it as its very epitome, a single unified thought. Considered by the music press nation-wide as the revelation of 2014 and best live set (Rockdelux 2015), with his simplistic evocative music he triggers emotional rivers in the listener. He has upheld, involuntarily, not just Spain’s most alternative techno pop of the 80’s (Golpes Bajos, Décima Víctima, La Mode) but has successfully reformed the most popular veins as well (Azul y Negro, Objetivo Birmania). Gerard has achieved reinventing the genre together with modern acts (Linda Mirada, Extraperlo, BFlecha, El Guincho). However his greatest achievement is integrating all these elements while creating his own truly remarkable sound.
̈ To me, El Ultimo Vecino are the light bulbs, colored ones at times, that are used to bathe a touristic cave with ambience. It is the light that makes a place fantastic. ̈
-Gerard Alegre
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