Manel

Formed during 2007 in Barcelona, Spain, the Catalan folk-pop group Manel features Guillem Gisbert on lead vocals, Roger Padilla on guitar and vocals, Martí Maymó on bass and vocals, and Arnau Vallvé on drums and vocals. The quartet issued its first full-length release, Els Millors Professors Europeus, through Discmedi in 2008; performed entirely in Catalan, the record drew widespread praise from outlets including Rockdelux and landed on multiple Albums of the Year lists. Those notices propelled strong sales, keeping Els Millors Professors Europeus on the Spanish albums chart for much of 2009 and pushing total units past 30,000, while a video supported the single “Dona Estrangera.” The album’s impact also revived broader interest in Catalan language and culture, securing the band a contract with Warner Music. Their second album, 10 Milles per Veure una Bona Armadura, reached the top of the Spanish album charts in 2011—the first entirely Catalan-language project to achieve that position in fifteen years—even though the songs remained deliberately noncommercial: dark, melancholic, at times gothic, frequently free of conventional pop structures, and filled with esoteric allusions, among them the Shakespeare-derived title “Ten Miles to See a Good Suit of Armor” drawn from Much Ado About Nothing. European touring followed, with especially warm reception in Germany that may have included Mittelalter audiences. Atletes Baixin de L’escenari arrived in 2013 and immediately climbed to number one on the Spanish Promusicae charts, while the fourth studio album, Jo Competeixo, appeared in 2016.