The Municipal Market of Vic isn’t there anymore. Power Burkas watched the demolition happen, then wrote a song about it.
“When you witness, with a kind of macabre fascination, the destruction of a part of your city; the sensation that this urban void leaves in your body, the points it illuminates, and the scenes of curious passersby and protocol-driven workers who appear for a few days,” is how the band describe “Rega runa,” one of thirteen songs on their fourth album “Amb la fi al davant,” out May 29 on BCore Disc.
The plot where the market used to stand is now becoming a CAP, a public health center.
Power Burkas have a take on that too: the city is putting up a clinic, “I suppose to treat the aftereffects that the amputation of one of the city’s ugliest yet most beloved buildings may have caused.” The album title is buried in the same song, in a line about being “a bunch of cross-eyed folks facing the end.”
Power Burkas are Claudi Dosta and Aleix Marbán on guitars, Martí Ferrer on drums, and Marcel Pujols on bass and vocals.
Thirteen years deep, all of them from Vic, a town about 70 km from Barcelona with its own deep musical history (most of which runs through more mainstream channels). “Amb la fi al davant” is their first full-length since 2021’s “Naïf, potser.” Five years between records, but the band say the rehearsals never stopped and the songs never stopped piling up. A few got out during the stretch, like the standalone “El conte de Nil Nadal” and a devotional cover of Sirles. The rest waited.
They sing in Catalan, and they make a point of distancing themselves from “rock català,” the umbrella term coined in the 90s to bracket Catalan-language pop. Power Burkas don’t fit the label and don’t want to.
What they do is take very ordinary stuff (cooking, exercising, shopping, watching TV, sitting in old-men’s bars, walking past demolition sites) and bend it sideways. Their own description of the album’s outlook reads: “we look at a world that collapses, that pushes, that indulges compulsively, that prepares itself, that leaves, that repulses us, that moves us, and that makes us want to keep playing.”
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“Pont del blanqueig” was called “Green Day” on the rehearsal room chalkboard for a long time. The song deals with what happens when you get pulled between self-loathing and self-satisfaction, but the band say it’s also tied to a real piece of Vic geography: the bridge that crosses the river Mèder, where the bus from Barcelona makes its first stop.
“With the lyrics, the green gradually faded into white, and the setting became fixed in a very specific spot in Vic,” they explain.
“No em venguis res” was written by drummer Martí Ferrer while he was setting up his own shop. That’s not a punchline, that’s the actual context, and it gives the song its bite. “People, things, places ask us for little moments, coins, or thoughts that keep spinning away in circles,” the band write. Someone tells you “I’m not buying that,” and all you’ve said is hello. They call the song “a liberating way of stating the intentions of the band.”
Martí also has lyric credits on “Farandulera,” which the band describe as “the final fake concert of our friend Andreu (aka Ubaldo).” A friend keeps insisting you come to his last show ever, you finally show up after enough phone calls, and it turns out it isn’t his last show. The lyric measures the whole thing against twelve years of human connection.
Elsewhere on the record: “Hac muda” is an ode to the unpronounced letter (“can I get close to your skin without sound, silent music, latent fire”). “Sembla que plourà” takes place in old-men’s bars, around fricandó on the stove and the R3 train line stuck somewhere between Tona and Hostalets, with Jaumet and his walking stick saying “it looks like it might rain.” “Crossfit Taradell” is exactly what it sounds like: Marcel singing about being a calf today, full of rage, “two sets of clothes and one skin.” “Hi ha gana” goes through hunger, simmering, and the case for not needing to be Ramon Pellicer to make a picada. “Un estornut” tackles waiting. “Doma natural” deals with anger.
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The record closes on “L’escudellòmetro,” which sets a monologue by Catalan writer Santiago Rusiñol to music. The band describe it as “full of lunar tearfulness” and call working on it “great fun to put together.” It’s also the track where guest vocalist Nutri’s screams go off, alongside another blow-up on “Super vivència.”
Recording happened at Music Lan with Joan Solé tracking instruments, then moved to Joan Peiron’s place for vocals. Peiron mixed and mastered, and shares a production credit with the band. “Working again, as always, with Joan Peiron, recording vocals at his place and explaining to us with surgical precision how he makes everything explode,” is how they sum up that part of it.
“Música, feta de joc” is a phrase Power Burkas sing on “Teloners del final,” and they say it remains their guiding principle 13 years in. Music made of play. “Amb la fi al davant” is out May 29 on BCore Disc, on 12″ vinyl and digital.
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