The story went from us winning a Grammy for the first time — we were very happy and ready to tour the world with that album [2019's "Mettavolution"] — and then we learned that we were not going anywhere," Gabriela Quintero recalls. "Instead came the pandemic."
One half of the incendiary Mexican guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela, Quintero and her longtime partner Rodrigo Sánchez, have been performing together since 1993 — first as teenage metalheads and later as an entrancingly inventive acoustic duo busking on the streets of Dublin.
"After 20-plus years of being on the road mainly, it was the first time we actually stopped — like proper stopped, not knowing what was coming, not knowing anything," Quintero tells. "We went back to our home, and then me and Rod, the way we process all of that uncertainty is always playing with the guitars. And that's how this album came about, without us wanting to actually create an album."
She's referring to 2023's "In Between Thoughts...A New World," the pair's sixth studio album and most musically expansive. Exploring themes of nonduality and existentialism, Rodrigo y Gabriela asked each other at the time, "What is this all about?" — this being life. The duo's instrumental sound has always been revolutionary — from Rodrigo's blazing dexterity to Gabriela's guitar body percussion that you can feel in your soul — but the pandemic took them in new directions.
"We started recording and we thought, 'Oh, maybe one of these days everything will go back to normal,'" she laughs. "But it didn't happen, so in the meantime, we kept experimenting a lot with the album. We started adding the electronics and whatever else." The pandemic persisted. "So then we added an orchestra," she laughs again.
For a pair that's made a career on the foundational simplicity of two acoustic guitars, "In Between Thoughts...A New World" features analog synths, a Mellotron, strings and percussion provided by Vienna-based composer Adam Ilyas Kuruc and The Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra — and an electric guitar. Thank god it's not Newport '65 and we can trust two richly talented artists to take all of these novel inputs and blend them seamlessly into the distinctive style Rod y Gab have been cultivating since the late '90s. Even the robotic, Daft Punk-esque vocals — yes, singing! — from Sánchez on "Finding Myself Leads Me to You" feel right at home.
"Rod is a big fan of Daft Punk — I am, too! He wanted to sound like that robot thing, and I told him, 'You sound like a sad robot.' Because it's a little sad," Quintero laughs.
Quintero is quite certain this album — these sounds — would not exist without the pandemic. "We've been acoustic art. We were very faithful to our acoustic thing, and especially because we know our fans like that," she says. "Doing all of that experimentation during the pandemic was because we had no expectations. We thought the world was gonna end. We focused on this album without actually thinking too much [about] what people were going to think. Stressful moments can also be good at triggering things — like take risks, creatively speaking, and just go and try new things that you've never done before."
Although they've reached a place where they have their own studio in Ixtapa on Mexico's southern Pacific Coast, a creative space that's always set up and ready to capture any inspiration, Rodrigo y Gabriela fundamentally consider themselves a live band.
"We've always been more strong live than [on] any recording," Quintero states. And it's not just the normal tropes of: They play the songs differently live, or switch up the sound a bit, or jam and improvise more on stage. Not at all. The experience of Rodrigo y Gabriela is a visceral one, one you feel thumping in your chest and tingling across your arms and legs as your tiny hair follicles throw up their horns. Even those who watch their live sets on YouTube don't fully understand the complexity and gravity they bring to the stage — and this is something new fans tell them after shows.
"There's an element of energy frequencies when you connect with people eye to eye," Quintero says. "Lately in our shows, we've been compelled to go down from the stage and play to the people in the audience."
The ferocity with which the pair performs is not so different from an elite athlete. In their younger years, they drank and partied after gigs, but these days, "when we finish the gig, we put our arms and hands into ice, as much as we can possibly hold. I can't really do more than two minutes, but that will be enough to prevent inflammation," she says.
Quintero believes she takes better care of herself now than she did in her 20s, and while she's a vegan now, she says "vegan doesn't necessarily mean that you are healthy, because I know a lot of vegans [that] don't like salad. They just eat junk vegan food that's not very healthy, but no judgment. I like those, too. But when you're on tour you really need to be on top of your health."
After more than 30 years together, Quintero says they keep it fresh by finding their "source of inspiration and let[ting] it grow. I think when something is genuine it tends to expand and grow. For us, that's the key."
One thing definitely hasn't changed: Rodrigo y Gabriela are still metalheads at heart. "You can listen to a lot of music and love it, but there's always something that will attract you to metal. There's always something at the core. I can learn to do a lot of new rhythms: African, Cuban or whatever. But it always sounds a little too metal, even if I'm playing on acoustic guitar. It's ingrained in us."
