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The Soft Moon, aka Luis Vasquez, has battled and documented in music his emotions, insecurities and anxieties. Criminal is by far his most confessional and self-reflective work to date. Luis has laid everything into his songs and is quite inspiring how he’s not afraid to put them out to the world. We talked to Luis about his approach to music and how Berlin is a place that inspires him. Words: Andreia Alves // Photo: Marion Constentin
ou recently played some live shows, which included Sacred Bones 10th Anniversary show in Los Angeles. How did that go? Have you played the new songs off the new album? Yeah. We played the first single “Burn” off Criminal a couple of times, but I felt that it was maybe a bit too soon because we rushed into trying to learn it. We didn’t have that much time. This tour was kind of not too last minute but more or less minute than usual, just a couple months before. Normally a tour is booked like six months in advance and things like that.
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You used to live in Oakland, but you’ve been living in Berlin for the past couple of years. What’s so special about it and which way it influences your music? I came to Berlin mainly because I wanted to live in Europe and the fan base here is much larger than in the States. There’s more of a connection in Europe and I felt that Berlin was also kind of central for me,
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so whenever I have to go play festivals or go on a tour in Europe, it’s quite easy as a starting point. In terms of the connection, it’s funny because I moved here six years ago for the first time and I had a hard time dealing with the city. At that time I was dealing with depression and whatever I was going through at the time, and I felt like the city added more to that, so it was a little bit overwhelming. A few years later, I came back and now I’ve been here for three and a half years and it’s inspiring. I think it’s more of the energy that the city has that is quite inspiring. There are a lot of people that are very creative and have a lot of freedom to be creative, and so that kind of energy inspires me. It’s also not the prettiest city and it’s not so pretty post-war, you know? They had to rebuild the city right away and the weather is not the best. I guess that influences me in a way that it takes me inside myself even further. Criminal is your fourth album and it’s really surprising how you let your most raw emotions flow throughout the whole
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album. Deeper was a much darker record than its predecessors, but Criminal takes darker to another level. What did inspire you this time around? I would say this is probably my angriest album, which I think another level of darkness is anger. I’m still talking about the same and still expressing the same things that I always do, like my anxiety, my thoughts and emotions, but now there’s also a layer of anger. It gets frustrating, you know? All of this time I’m trying to get to a happy place in my life. It becomes too much after a while and then naturally it was just kind of frustrated, so there was a little bit more frustration and there was also more desperation. I’m like reaching in order to heal myself and now I’m talking about my father in one of the songs and things like that. It’s getting more personal – not more personal because it’s all personal, but more specific. Now I’m pointing out specific things and I think that’s just the main difference in this album. Criminal is definitely a confessional work.
