Photogrpahy Robb Klassen
10 years ago the indie luminary released his mixtape I’m Sure- you may be familiar with the single “Swing Lynn” off the album, which exploded online over the last couple of years and is now gold-certified and has nearly half a billion streams (and counting). It’s been 8 years since Harmless’s last full-length, Harmless Fantasies, because 6 years ago his life changed. Nacho was run over by a drunk driver while riding his bike to work, which led to countless surgeries and years in rehab to relearn how to walk. Slowly he’s been able to return to music and he’s now penned Springs Eternal, an unbelievable album that chronicles his life over the past few years and confronts the challenges of his ongoing journey.
Nacho was born and raised in Toluca, Mexico and eventually his family moved and settled in San Diego at the age of 10 — he actually turned to hip-hop to expand his English vocabulary. Springs Eternal not only tackles the challenges he’s faced since the life-altering incident but also acts as a conversation with his younger self about acceptance and the barriers he’s experienced as an immigrant. This album is Nacho reverting back to his youth, prior to the hit & run that nearly killed him. It was written and recorded in his room, and he imposed strict rules on himself to create only using the instruments he had access to when he was younger. Nacho also opens up about his story as an immigrant in the US and his role as a Latino artist making indie music.
What’s the main message behind this record?
I wanted to make a record of a conversation with my younger self on the subject of personal grief. That healing and hurting can be true at the same time. I wanted to chat about the things we are joyful about and at the same time the things that pain us.
Why Spring Eternal as a title?
I am notoriously bad at naming anything. I often name my demo sessions something meaningless and nonsensical that by the time a song is finished I can’t reasonably call something “awpoopsydaisy”. I usually ask friends to think of titles for anything. No one’s title suggestions were hitting the true theme of the record so for a while I gave up. I begrudgingly sent the whole record to a friend in Mexico, who was in this band that to this day I love and I’m jealous of… Hawaiian Gremlins. I am always hesitant to my music to other musicians, especially those I look up to because… you know. Insecurity. Honestly, I’m never more desperate for someone to like my work than other musicians. Well, I sent the record over to my buddy Paco and he said… “This record makes me feel like hope springs eternal.” A phrase that I hadn’t heard before that is used to express pure optimism. He then suggested I name it after that phrase given what my life has been like these past number of years. I felt it was very fitting since despite what I have gone through, being run over and all, I still haven’t given up on the dream.
What do you remember from your near death experience and what do you carry with you from it to this day?
When I was a kid in Mexico, I grew up next to a cemetery. I overlooked graves every night before I went to bed. My biggest fear as a kid wasn’t that some vampire, ghost, or zombie would manifest from the crypts that I looked at every night. No, my main fear was always what’s gonna happen to me when I die. I’d think about it sometimes so much I would make myself cry. As you can tell, I have a very vivid memory which up until getting run over had been a blessing. The unfortunate truth about my near-death experience is that I didn’t lose consciousness and I remember all of it. From the moment the car hit me to the 8 hours it took for them to take me to spinal and facial surgery. I remember losing the feeling in my legs, my face apart, friends crying. I’ll spare you some of the details but all of it stays with me. I feel pain in my legs when it gets cold, I feel it when I am tired. I even feel it when I am not feeling anything seeing as a part of my forehead has lost sensation. I carry the experience in my body. It sucks. It affects my life but thankfully not always my spirit. The only thing I don’t remember well, or carry with me, is what it felt like to be who I was before this. It’s as if I took the place of someone else. I made this record as a way to figure out what it was like to be that kid, afraid of death and looking toward the future. Also, the experience didn’t help me overcome the fear of death. Still terrified, haha.
Most representative song on the record and why?
Honestly, maybe Couldn’t Be Me. It’s the only song that I think sonically and lyrically communicates the theme of the record. It’s a song that’s both cheerful and melancholic. Whenever I play it live, I can’t help but sway even though the lyrics are about how much I compare myself to others and how awful it makes me feel. I speak in contradictions, a language any version of me would understand. After all that’s what the record is about to me, a conversation with who I used to be about who I currently am.
You turned to hip hop to improve your English. What was it like growing up as an immigrant and what advantages do you think your heritage gives you?
I turned to hip-hop because it felt like something so definitively American when I got here. I distinctly remember begging Santa Claus for a copy of Speakerboxx/The Love Below for Christmas. I’d listen to it on my stereo in my room and read the lyric sheet out loud as I listened to the music because it helped my dictation. I mean… I did all of this because when I got to the USA, I remember going to elementary school and feeling like another for the first time. I went to a very white elementary school in San Diego. I was made fun of for my name and my accent. I remember using a word incorrectly as I tried to read out loud and the teacher corrected me quite harshly in front of all the class. I went home and committed myself to practicing my English in the mirror every day. Looking back at it, those memories are really sad. I cleansed myself of the things that made me who I was just to fit in, a theme that I sometimes feel I still carry to this day. I am proud of my heritage but I am also selective of where to act on it. I feel like I am my most full self when I am with my mom or my Mexico city friends. As for an advantage? I don’t know, I’ve always felt like it’s been a disadvantage. Either in work or in life, it’s always felt like something I need to explain to be accepted or be given an opportunity. Even in the simplest of ways, I have to explain to people what my name means and what it is because I am tired of being made fun of for it. Even in the industry, not long ago I was at an industry party and someone harassed me about it. It’s insane. I don’t know. I think maybe the one advantage it gives me above everything else is empathy. I think Latin culture has a deeper understanding of empathy than American culture does. Here it’s always felt like empathy is something to capitalize on, that it should only be used in exchange for commerce, I mean I worked at a retail shop once that made us watch instructional videos on how being empathetic would boost sales. I don’t believe in that. I engage with empathy in the way I was raised to. I try and build closeness with the people in my life. It’s very healing. My mom currently teaches a class on empathy at SDSU. I think that’s sometimes what we are here for.
Who are your mentors and inspirations?
Man… Inspiration… Mentors… Tim Hecker, Dan Bejar (Destroyer), Purple Mountains/Silver Jews, Acetone, Smashing Pumpkins, Mount Analog, Amoeba, In Sheep’s Clothing, and Boomkat. I included record shops at the end because I’m not going to lie. I blind buy records all the time from stores that put love into their curation. Amoeba is just an ocean of stuff, but like, Mount Analog and In Sheeps, in particular, are shops that I always feel put a love in what they have there. I often find myself inspired by things I would have never discovered if it weren’t for those spaces. Your local record shop employee will find you your next obsession I guarantee.
What can we expect from your 2024?
Hopefully to be on stage a lot. That’s what I really wanna do. I want to celebrate life by taking this show on the road. I know that my life and the subject matter of what I chose to write about is heavy but my shows themselves aren’t. The stage is a place for me to be goofy, to be uninhibited, and to celebrate the joy of living with you. I love working the merch table and talking with everyone that comes through. I don’t love the mysticism of indie music, I wanna be there in that space and share in the thing that makes music worth it for as long as I can. Aside from that… I’m working on a lot of new stuff, so hopefully I’ll finish that.
