Carne Doce
Album: Interior
Release Date: 2020
Brazil
Hi, Salma! Will you please introduce your band to your international fans? Also, what are the main characteristics and subjects of Carne Doce?
We are an indie/rock/MPB band (we always had difficulty classifying our musical style). Mac and I are married and we started to compose and develop the idea of the band in 2012. From then on, we have released 4 albums. I am the lyricist, I write about different subjects: Loneliness, relationships, romances, crises, sometimes about politics too. I have a certain facility to deal with unmentionable matters.
How do you create your emotional boundaries in your albums? How would you describe Interior in terms of those boundaries or limits?
As a lyricist, one of my stimuli is precisely to flirt with the limits, to see the extent to which I can speak more directly on some subjects. So many of my lyrics have a confessional and provocative tone. But more recently, what has been stimulating me is trying to write something with less words, and in the simplest way so that anyone can identify and be moved, while still transmitting authenticity. I think that is why our last album is more comprehensive, more universal.
Brazil’s been suffering from a political earthquake during one of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreaks recently. Can you tell us about your country’s current psychological status? How do you think that will be affecting your music and the local music industry in general?
Even before the pandemic, the cultural scene was already in a bad moment with Bolsonaro’s government, which sees artists as enemies, as leftists, communists, perverts who need to be fought or at least marginalized. With the pandemic, although we never seriously adopted the lockdown, the shows that were our main source of livelihood were banned and so our entire scene entered a very serious crisis, venues are closing, technicians are changing their professional area, and we have no prospect of when things will get better, we really don’t know if vaccination will be accomplished in time, and if when the pandemic passes, we will still have a sustainable market. Regarding the psychological status of the country, I feel that the general concern is to be able to continue working and avoid a recession, and also an impression that it is each one for himself.
It is really hard to predict when we can all go back to live gigs but what are your plans for the rest of the year in order to somehow connect with your fans?
As a band we never knew how to use social media intensively, we don’t know how to create content other than music to keep our fans engaged when we try to do that it doesn’t seem authentic, we are not influencers. And making new music is complicated because we cannot rehearse as before and we do not have the resources to invest in recordings. By the end of the year, we plan to make some lives, record some tracks, and ask for donations. Parallel to that, Mac and I created an acoustic project as a way to make our return to the stage feasible while the band cannot perform.
We’ve happily selected A Caçada for our loop-songs series. Your lyrics are always deeply sophisticated and they play a big part in your music. Will you please tell us what A Caçada is about?
These lyrics were inspired by a short story by Lygia Fagundes Telles, a Brazilian author. In the story, a man enters an antique shop and is faced with a rug that reproduces the scene of a hunt, which awakens an existential crisis. The lyrics of the song approach this crisis in a more abstract and superficial way.
Album Cover: Interior [2020] 
Salma Jô 
It creates its own atmosphere and almost commands you to stay inside of it. How did this powerful and genre-fluid song come together?
Thank you! I think it was a happy result of the spontaneous encounter of musicians with such different influences. This particular song started to be composed by our bassist Aderson Maia, from a drum recording by Fred Valle (Carne Doce’s drummer). Both have a strong reggae and dub influence, which I don’t have, and then there was a mixture of that style with my style that is more melodic and dramatic, and then João and Macloys’ guitars gave a more ethereal ambiance to the whole group.
Speaking of the genres, what would you like to say about the Victor Rice dub remix before we finish?
Because of this influence of Fred Valle and Aderson Maia, who was already an admirer of Victor Rice, we decided to ask him for this version. It is the first time we have a remix of some of our music and we love the result.
Lyrics: A Caçada
Estive de fora
Estive na mira
Depois me perdi
Agora estou presa à caça
Agora essa caçada
É só um tapete em pedaços
E eu sou só um trapo de alguém
Só uma paródia de mim
Na mira
Habita
Cria
Na mira
Habita
Crua
Cruel
É a lâmina e a bainha
E o ar, e o céu
E a seta, e o corte, e a porta aberta
Tracklist: Interior
1. “Temporal”
2. “Interior”
3. “Hater”
4. “Garoto”
5. “Saudade”
6. “Passarin“
7. “A Partida“
8. “Sonho“
9. “Fake”
10. “Cérebro Bobo”
11. “A Caçada”
12. “De Graça”
