Neu Las Robertas

It doesn’t sound like Costa Rica is the easiest place for a noisy band to live - and noisy is the operative word here, Las Robertas’ fuzzy guitars disguising their girl group-style almost-harmonies.

The band were recommended to us a little while ago by The Racket, so we tracked down Monserrat and Mercedes (bass and guitar respectively) to answer a few questions for us.

Where are you all from, and how did you form?
We’re all originally from Costa Rica except Lola, she was born in France but came very young to live here. She’s more Costarican than ourselves now.

You were recommended to us by London band The Racket - have you spent much time in the UK?
Sadly, none of us have been to the U.K before… We’d seriously love to go (hopefully we’ll go next year!).

For those who won’t have heard you yet, how would you describe your music?
Angsty, sappy, sometimes angry, in terms of other bands perhaps it would be like if JAMC and the Deal sisters married to Black Tambourine and had a baby named Las Robertas.

If Las Robertas had a mission statement, what would it be?
Our only mission is to play and just get people to listen to our music all around the world.

Is Costa Rica a good place to be a young band? Are there many coming out of the area?
It’s a bit hard living in here, there’s only a few venues to choose to play at, so at the end you rotate in between them, it’s a bit sickening for us and the people who attend shows. It is very hard to plan out something different for the audience every time that we play. And yes, there are tons of bands and coming.

What about as a music fan? Do you get many bands visiting for shows?
It is very sad, but we never have bands in Costa Rica that we really like, only big rock “monsters” as Metallica, Aerosmith or Shakira come to play. A few weeks ago we had JAPANDROIDS here in San José, we opened for them along with 2 other bands from here and it has been probably the best show we’ve ever experienced. They are rad!!!!!!!

Your ‘Cry Out Loud’ EP was released a wee while ago now, do you have any other releases or interesting projects in the works?
We’re planning to release a single at the end of the year, plus Cry Out Loud will be re-released in North America and we will be visiting the U.S for a small tour as well.

What other up and coming bands should we be checking out?
The Whines, they’re from Portland, Oregon and we think everyone should listen to their music.