The Parrots: “We’re all about raw energy”

Life is pretty sweet right now for Madrid punks The Parrots and their super chilled frontman Diego García as he lounges in the same bedroom in which he created The Parrots’ rousing garage punk, thrill-a-minute debut album, ‘Los Niños Sin Miedo’.

The Parrots’ charm is simple yet wonderfully addictive, marrying raucous free wheeling rock’n’roll jams to a subtly tender heartfelt underbelly. “We’re all about raw energy,” says Diego. “We tried to be raw and sincere. We’re very open about ourselves.”

While The Parrots’ rise has been swift, following fellow Spanish upstarts Hinds, the band have, in fact, been writing for years with Diego stockpiling hundreds of tracks. “Most of the songs I write here in my room,” explains Diego. “It’s just me recording for hours in my room.”

“It’s way easier,” he continues. “I used to have lots of free time because I had no job at all. I would stay in my room 24 hours with my microphones and guitars and try to make as many things as possible. We have four albums ready to be released but never made it to the final cut.” He laughs as he ponders a future Parrots box set of unreleased gold in 20 years time. “Like the Wu-Tang box and sell it for £1 million,” he laughs.

Wu-Tang and, in fact, hip hop in general is a big influence for The Parrots. Despite their garage rock jams, a lot of Diego’s influence comes from the challenging social and musical ideals of contemporary rappers. “Recent hip hop is more interesting than most ,” he says. “The guys making hip hop now want to do it all the way. Most indie bands are comfortable people and they don’t say anything to me.”

The fun-time thrills of their debut hide a darker side from The Parrots that emerges on more post punk-influenced cuts. The album was born from troubled times. “The theme is learning to deal with leaving stuff behind,” reveals Diego. “We went through some difficult personal years. I had to learn how to deal with people leaving and me leaving people. Sometimes it’s difficult and you have to live the best way you can. This is about dealing with the difficult stuff.”

Despite blowing up in different countries across the world, The Parrots still closely value the link to their home city, with many songs sung in Spanish. The burgeoning rock’n’roll scene in Madrid is something they are particularly proud to be a part of.

“Madrid is getting better. We feel partly responsible for that,” begins Diego. “There were a lot of clubs that played crappy house music. Bad Latin house music. There are more bands coming out now in Madrid with a rock’n’roll inspiration. It feels good because we’re home. It’s where we live and it’s good to support projects from people who you really like who you’ve known for ages. It’s a fun place to be.”

Right now though, the future for The Parrots expands far beyond the chilled out rock vibes rippling through Madrid. As always though, they like to keep things simple and focus on what excites them: “We want to travel as much as we can, and get drunk for free as much as we can. We just want to meet new people.”