Years ago, a friend of mine attempted to describe a new band called The Marías, who at the time were almost untraceable. Their music wasn’t on any streaming platforms, and you couldn’t buy their EPs in stores. Yet somehow, that intangible, romantic musical feeling began to spread regardless. The buzz grew, and The Marías soon became one of America’s hottest new acts. DFW will have a chance to experience the aural romance of The Marías in person when they perform at The Factory at 8 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 6.
“I think we just gravitate toward writing about love in general,” says the band’s mononymous and eponymous frontwoman María with a laugh. “I love being in love.”
The Marías’ sound is a jubilant, spine-tingling and subtle brand of soulful psychedelia that sits comfortably alongside other genre-omnivorous acts' like Tame Impala and Leon Bridges. In the seven months that have passed between the release of their debut full-length album CINEMA, the band has drawn millions of streams on YouTube, made an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live and became part of the long-anticipated 2022 Coachella lineup, playing April 15 alongside artists Harry Styles, Phoebe Bridgers, and Grupo Firme.
If there is a genre-fluid characteristic that is constant throughout The Marías’ music, it is the color red. It’s more than an aesthetic choice in their artwork, videos and performances. It permeates the band’s music and feels essential to their amorous themes. María says the band’s fascination with the color red stems from her lifelong love for the films of Pedro Almodóvar, particularly her favorite, Talk to Her, which is reflected in the titles of two tracks on CINEMA: the sensual, horn-driven interlude “Hable Con Ella” and the album’s chilling, evocative, jazzy closing track “Talk to Her.”
“The instrumental [for “Talk to Her”] is something Josh [Conway, drummer/producer for The Marías] started years and years ago,” she says. “I remember him waking up one morning, going to the piano, playing the chords and singing a little melody. And I remember thinking ‘I love this,’ but nothing ever came of it until years later. I keep a little diary, a tour journal, and the entry that you hear in that song I found in my journal. I read it to Josh, and it was funny because it’s so dark, but we felt the same way and thought ‘This has to see the light of day in some form.’ After reciting the journal entry, Josh was like ‘What if we put that journal entry on top of this instrumental?’ We tried it and it kind of worked out.”
When it comes to the band’s oblique sonic palette, María and Conway had more or less complete autonomy of their sound since their beginning in 2016 but had to learn to take outside opinions into consideration, especially after getting signed to Nice Life, a label associated with Atlantic Records, for their debut LP.“A lot of times when I write music, it comes from a subconscious place that in the moment doesn’t even make sense to me, but maybe years later I’ll listen back to the song and it’ll make perfect sense." - María
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“Everything before 2020 was fully independent,” María says. “We really didn’t get any feedback from anyone. Josh and I were just ‘These are the songs that we’re going to release, this is it.’ Now that we’ve got a larger team, which is great, there are a little bit of growing pains just because we’re not used to other people suggesting certain things. At the end of the day, it might be the best thing for the song, but we’re just not used to it. It’s great to have that extra support, those extra ears to sort of guide us along.”
One of those extra ears is producer Ricky Reed, who came to fame in the mid-2010s helping produce juggernaut albums like Twenty One Pilots’ Blurryface, Leon Bridges’ Good Thing, and Lizzo’s Cuz I Love You.
“He has sort of guided us and given us some direction and mentorship,” María says. “... He gives us the freedom to do whatever we feel is right. Whether we take his advice or not, he totally respects it. On ‘Hush,’ he suggested we raise the tempo a little bit, and we sort of met in the middle. We didn’t raise it as much as he would have liked, and in hindsight, it would have sounded better at a faster tempo. It’s the first time that we’ve had sort of a mentor in the process of creating music, so we’re just sort of learning as we go.”
On the other hand, María says, when it come to her songwriting, much of the time it is not a conscious process, but rather an indescribable one.
“A lot of times when I write music, it comes from a subconscious place that in the moment doesn’t even make sense to me, but maybe years later I’ll listen back to the song and it’ll make perfect sense,” she says. “I think we’re just this sort of middle vessel through [which] the songs want to see the light of day. There are times I didn’t understand [the songs] until later. I think it makes sense why people gravitate towards certain songs based on what’s happening in their lives, because that’s the beauty of music. Not making it super specific to our day-to-day, but rather specific to our emotions. I think makes the music more relatable.”
While María and the band occasionally make shifts into Spanish-language lyrics, and one track rides a heavy reggaeton beat, The Marías are not in any way a Latin music act. That would be like calling The Scorpions krautrock. The Marías have had no experience with their songs in Spanish failing to reach a wider audience.
“I think they can just feel it,” María says. “The best example of that is when we went to Indonesia in 2019, and people there whose first language isn’t even English were singing the songs in Spanish. It was pretty surreal. It was the first time where I realized that this music could transcend if the feeling is right.”
That feeling can only mean one thing. The Marías are indeed the sound of being in love.
