Hinds

Last night in Valencia, something beautifully unhinged happened. The walls of Sala Moon were shaken, stirred, baptised in warm lager and reintroduced to the ancient art of losing your mind at a rock show. On stage: Hinds. In the crowd: absolutely everyone who has ever believed that guitars should be loud, friends should be closer, and a Tuesday night should feel like the start of a three-day bank-holiday bender.

Support came from Chloe's Clue, who walked into the room with that cool, unbothered magnetism that says, “Yes, I will break your heart, but in a tasteful, melodically responsible way.” The early arrivals shuffled forward, drinks in hand, conversations half-finished, and within minutes they were fully locked in. There’s something disarming about the way her songs sneak up on you—soft at the edges, but emotionally armed to the teeth. Heads nodded. Hips swayed. Someone near the bar loudly declared love. A perfect opening chapter.But when the house lights dipped for Hinds, the temperature jumped about ten degrees and subtlety left the building in a taxi.

From the first note, it was chaos in the best possible sense: the kind where strangers become teammates, where every chorus is a group project, where your voice disappears but you keep shouting anyway. Hinds have always traded in the holy trinity of charm, hooks and gloriously scrappy energy, and live, that formula detonates. They don’t so much “play” a gig as throw a party that just happens to involve amplifiers.What hits you is the joy. Real joy. Unfiltered, unpretentious, contagious. The band grin at each other like they can’t believe their luck; the crowd grin back like they feel exactly the same. It’s a feedback loop powered by distortion pedals and bad decisions tomorrow morning.

Sala Moon, already one of the city’s great sweatboxes, transformed into a heaving, bouncing organism. Every jump rattled the floor. Every chant rolled back toward the stage like a dare. Beer performed brief, beautiful flights through the air. Phones tried their best and mostly failed to capture the mayhem. Perfect.

The set moved at breakneck speed but never felt rushed. There were moments of ragged brilliance, the kind that remind you rock ’n’ roll isn’t meant to be polished until it forgets to breathe. There were shout-along refrains delivered by several hundred auxiliary band members. There was dancing that would embarrass people in daylight. There was the unmistakable sense that this—right here—is why we leave the house. Between songs, the chatter was loose, funny, heartfelt. Hinds have that rare ability to make a room feel small, like you’re all crammed into some mythical rehearsal space where anything might happen and probably will. By the midpoint, the crowd would’ve followed them into battle. Or at least into another chorus.

And what a crowd. Valencia turned up glowing and ready. Indie kids, lifers, curious first-timers, groups of mates out for “just one” that became several existential hours of volume therapy. Arms aloft, voices shredded, everyone moving like the week’s worries had been placed in a locker somewhere near the merch desk. By the encore, Sala Moon had reached that beautiful state of collective delirium where gravity becomes optional. Sweat on the ceiling. Smiles everywhere. The band wringing every last drop from the night, the audience giving it straight back twice as hard.

When the lights finally came on, people looked dazed, euphoric, slightly rearranged. Exactly as it should be. Hinds didn’t just play Valencia; they hugged it, shook it, and left it laughing in the street afterwards, promising to text. Chloe’s Clue set the fuse, Sala Moon provided the rocket, and the crowd supplied the combustion. If this is what yesterday looked like, tomorrow has a lot to live up to.

Words and photos: Rhyan Paul