Russian Red-Hot
Published 28 months ago
Aesthetically-pleasing Spanish songstress sets her sights on Blighty.
- Text by Hynam Kendal
First thing’s first: Russian Red is beautiful. Like
BEAUTIFUL. Capital B. Yes, Russian Red’s sultry seniorita Lourdes Hernández
is a looker. Though she’ll haggle you a lesser simile. “Myspace makes
one look better. Having a certain physic condition doesn't affect how
people perceive you if what you do is sincere and pure.”
The music isn’t much less aesthetically-doting, beautiful for the ears
the way her poisoned plastic lips are beauty for the eyes: when she
sings she has the voice of an aged woman who has seen too much of the
world, lost lovers at sea, grandchildren grown and left, her bones
cracking from the se and the salt. In her voice there's nobody left to
love her... You hear it in the cracks and the trills, Accentless but
for the aching explosions of heartache. Think Diana Vickers, but with
heart and soul. How the hell did you manage to get so much heartache
into your songs? Lyric example: “On my way, way to the stars I
found… you were there, laying down next to a hole. Oh, hold me.” It’s
as though the world stands still for her. Only she has loved. “That's the most beautiful thing someone has ever
said about my voice, it gives me hope,” Lourdes inhales, surprised -
hopefully flattered - exclamation rising her words to a pitch of
indeterminate falsetto. “There's something about not being loved that
is endlessly inspiring. I suppose that thought makes me resemble what
you get from listening to my songs.”
I play my friends 'Cigarettes' and they just ache for it. They love it.
Superlative response from all my friends whose musical tastes are so
very different... “I‘m chasing locations to your door” it radiates.
“Getting older’s not been on my plans.”
“Cigarettes is the song people like the most, and it so surreal 'cause
I composed it in the most casual way and I never dreamt people playing
or even discussing it in England. Makes me happy to hear this!” she
beams. She should see the beams she herself created with the replay of
debut album 'I Love Your Glasses'. An album that sounds married to do a
different era altogether, like the jazz and set singers of the 30s...
“I suppose that reflects what my parents used to play when I was little
(a lot of cranky Spanish music mixed up with The Beatles, Patti Smith,
Shirley Bassey, Roy Orbison, Frank Sinatra) and the music I then
discovered myself, the good old Napster years…”
The only bone of contention with 'I Love Your Glasses', phonetic
perfection, is the continual theme of love. It is a folly of youth to
always write and sing love songs, the easiest songs to sing. “Love is
so daily one cannot try to avoid it. It's in those ‘different subjects’
too, and with time one learns to face it with different words, that's
the only difference.” At such a young age - barely tip-toed out of teen
adolescence - surely you couldn’t have had that much heartbreak? “Maybe
other types of intense feelings can give shape to a huge heartbreak.”
Each song is a didactic set-piece, a little Ibsen play of sorrow and
loss... Will she not be content until we cry salt tears down our
already damp faces?! “LOL. I'd also say they keep some sort of hopeful
ray of light.”
Before she readies herself to travel to Iceland to film a
movie/documentary with LA BLOGOTÈQUE crew, I adopt the guise of gushing
fan… a guise I find easy in its execution. “Tell me, how did Cigarettes
come about? It’s my favourite. I love it,” I enthuse. “It’s really
nothing interesting. It was created in a kitchen, saying whatever came
to my mind, after dinner in a winter week day.”
Russian Red’s debut album I Love Your Glasses is on wide release now on Eureka Records / EMI Publishing Spain.
