Roberto Musso, from El Cuarteto de Nos: “We are a rare rock band and we love it”

The Cuarteto de Nos presents Lamina Once, their new studio album (Photos: Karin Topolanski)

“Although it sounds strange, sometimes I finish rounding off the concept of an album with the questions and the feedback with the journalists. Because one theorizes in the answers and discovers new paths that, perhaps, were not there at the time of the composition of the songs. He is very crazy, but it happens. And he seems super enriching to me, ”he says. Roberto Mussosinger and composer of The Quartet of Usin the first seconds of conversation with teleshow.

The Uruguayans premiere Plate Eleven, their seventeenth studio album, the excuse for this conversation and a new reason to make their fans scream. That, according to Musso, are getting younger. “We were always a weird rock band, which I love.. I don’t want to risk a percentage -and I love statistics- but I would tell you that 80% of our people must be under 25 years of age. Despite being fighters who continue with the banner of the traditional rock band of yesteryear, young people discover something that does not become vintagebecause it is very contemporary”, defines Musso about the bustle of this band that emerged in the early 80s in Montevideo and has been rhyming long before rhymes were fashionable.

To reinforce its character as an unusual band and to shape the concept of the album, the Uruguayans started from the well-known Test of Rorschach, psychodiagnostic technique used to study personality through what a person observes in ten sheets with ink stains, ambiguous and figurative. With white, gray, black and lilac tones, the cover that encompasses the eight songs on the album – more varied and guitar-oriented than Thursdayits predecessor published in 2019- was designed as if it were the eleventh sheet, the one that would complete the method developed by the German psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach in 1921.

"Despite being fighters who continue with the flag of the traditional rock band, of yesteryear, young people discover something that is not vintage, because it is very contemporary”, says Roberto Musso about the audience of El Cuarteto de Nos
“Despite being some fighters who continue with the flag of the traditional rock band, of yesteryear, young people discover something that is not vintage, because it is very contemporary,” says Roberto Musso about the audience of El Cuarteto de Nos

“There is a core of various themes that go through the eight songs, which in the pandemic had been put under the magnifying glass: hyperpolarization, radicalization, the partisanship of two sides, the eternal search for a culprit, the loss of self-criticism, the algorithms…”, enumerates the vocalist of the group when thinking about the conception of the album.

“We are being required to take a position, in whatever world: political, cultural, sports, whatever. And if you don’t, you are qualified as indifferent. I never liked that and less when the scale of options is reduced to two. The grays are disappearing. A or B? Black or white? doTeam summer or team winter?”, delves into the composer he found in the Rorschach test a correlate of the times.

“In addition to being a psychiatrist and psychologist, Rorschach was also a plastic artist and I was interested stack that, because of how the guy was able to combine his two loves there. With symmetrical inkblot sheets and very little data, he drew conclusions. And something of that is happening to us now: with the accumulation of information that we are having, we classify another person and determine that he is one way or another. as the theme saysFrankenstein Postmo’, today’s idea is ‘to know almost nothing about almost everything’”analyzes Musso while he quotes himself.

The Nos Quartet – Rorschach

Excuse me, what do you want me to do to him? If I only see spots”, howls Musso between the swarm of guitars of “Rorschach”, the key theme of the album and the one that condenses the idea. At that point, he says that he was interested in developing a character who submits to the test but does not see specific figures on the sheet. “He seemed to me a kind of antihero of these times, defending that flag of only seeing spots. It is in his law and he has the right to see like this, without being classified in any way, ”he thinks.

An intention that is in line with many of El Cuarteto’s songs, which do not present a good guy or a bad guy, a winner or a loser. “We never go down line, we never raise: ‘I have the moral superiority of being on stage and having a microphone. You pay attention to what I say’. More than that, I find it more interesting to put a question mark”, defines Roberto.

“We never go down the line. More than that, I find it more interesting to put a question mark”, analyzes Roberto Musso about El Cuarteto de Nos
“We never go down the line. More than that, I find it more interesting to put a question mark”, analyzes Roberto Musso about El Cuarteto de Nos

After a percussion and a distortion that warn that everything is about to explode, the first thing that is heard in Plate Eleven is the phrase “here I am, waiting for the world to change” from the song “Flan”. Premonition or “Monday’s diary”? For Roberto, neither. “I always have phrases or possible titles that I put together and pull out when I start working on new songs. At the beginning of 2020 we went on tour and, when we were in Mexico, we had to quickly return to Uruguay, to quarantine ourselves. There I started to review what I had written in 2019 and I was surprised that there were a lot of phrases and ideas that were resignified, to one side or the other.“, remember. That line was one of them and from there it started.

On the other hand, Musso recognizes himself “very obsessive” in the fact of collecting words that yes or yes he wants as a song title. “Flan” was one of them and with which he proposed a poetic metaphor about the state of things “because there is nothing less metaphorical than a flan“, Serie.

It’s a song for this trembling, doubtful, unstable society… And, after the pandemic, that the album begins with ‘here I am, waiting for the world to change’ seemed like a good intention to me”, he adds and reveals that the fact that “Flan” begins like this and is not random the first tracks. “Although less and less an album is heard as before, as a conceptual work, we are still concerned about the order of the songs. So, we liked that principle with this phrase. And that, later, it ended with the phrase ‘something will be reborn from the city without a soul’ (“The city without a soul”). A beginning with expectations and an end with a mixture of pseudo-hopeful nostalgia. We are rubble, soulless, all destroyed. But worse than this, maybe we can’t get there“, He says.

“Although less and less an album is heard as before, as a conceptual work, we are still concerned about the order of the songs"says Roberto Musso, from El Cuarteto de Nos (Photos: Karin Topolanski)
“Although less and less an album is heard as before, as a conceptual work, we are still concerned about the order of the songs,” says Roberto Musso, from El Cuarteto de Nos (Photos: Karin Topolanski)

With this album -the first released through their label Porfiado Records and once again produced together with Hector Castillo Y Edward Goat-, The Quartet once again puts on the table the importance of mental health (the album Bipolar; the song “Good day, Benito” and his story of bullying; “September 21” with Alzheimer’s…), something that undoubtedly worsened during the pandemic.

“I have been thinking about it a lot, because the pandemic has encapsulated it and masked it in something that we do not know what will happen, with the elderly or children who have been locked up for so long… Uruguay has the highest suicide rate, by far, in all of the Americas. And it is something that is rarely talked about, is taboo or neglected. I think that this idea of ​​the Rorschach Test and the classification of someone with a mental pathology is something that should not be taken lightly and we have to see what we can do about it”, says Musso.

At the same time, and although at the time of writing he prefers to distance himself from “responsibility” before his audience, he says that he takes into account who is on the other side. “The number of people who told us: ‘This song saved my life’… There is a channel that mobilizes and it is crazy how something that I am writing at home becomes so important, how you can influence the life of a person”, close.

Cover oflamina Once, the seventeenth studio album by El Cuarteto de Nos
Cover oflamina Once, the seventeenth studio album by El Cuarteto de Nos

Between the end of October and the beginning of November, El Cuarteto de Nos will tour Argentina to present Lance Once. They start on the 28th of October in Tucumán, the 29th in Córdoba, the 30th in Rosario, the 4th of November in Mar del Plata, the 5th in Bahía Blanca and the 6th in Neuquén. But the most important date will undoubtedly be the one in Buenos Aires, on Thursday, November 3 at the Movistar Arena.

Every place we go becomes the most important date in the history of the band, quantitatively.. That will be our show in Buenos Aires with the most tickets sold, something rare for a band with so many years of career. But it is happening to us now”, analyzes the singer.

KEEP READING:

We would love to say thanks to the author of this post for this remarkable material

Roberto Musso, from El Cuarteto de Nos: “We are a rare rock band and we love it”