Trasto viejo: the song of the furthest-away bin

Trasto. Trasto. Trasto. ("Junk", a useless old thing.) The lyrics hammer that word again and again, and by the third time you no longer know whether they're describing a broken piece of furniture or a person. That's the fun and also the spite of the song.

Everything happens along a very specific route: from use to the dump. First the junk is used, then thrown out, then it's in the way, it stinks, and in the end it lands in the «contenedor más apartado» ("the furthest-away bin"), which is the detail I like most. Not just any bin will do. It has to be the most distant one, the one on the corner nobody goes to, so you never have to see it again.

Who's the junk?

Here everyone makes their own reading. You can hear it as the lament of someone who has been used and then dumped, because in the chorus the list ends with «abandonado, utilizado» ("abandoned, used"), and that sounds like a wound. But you can also hear it the other way round, as the revenge of someone who finally looks at their ex and sees them as they are: an old piece of junk that takes up space and is good for nothing. I think the song plays at both, and depending on the day it catches you on one side or the other.

It's built like a chant, almost a schoolyard game, with very short lines that stick like chewing gum. No complicated metaphors or grand phrases. There's one ugly word repeated until it becomes a mantra, and that's very liberating. Sometimes you don't need poetry to explain what you feel. It's enough to say junk eight times in a row.

It's a song for deep-cleaning day, the one when you carry down to the street bags full of things you'd kept for years without knowing why. Or for the day you do the same with someone.

Dedicate it to whoever treated you like a throwaway object. Or put it on when you're the one feeling like that, and remember that old furniture can be restored too.

The full lyrics are further down. Listen on Spotify