Beaming down from the stars in their silver atmospheres, we have the new album by Matías Singer (go sulk in the corner, Joe Strummer!).
The disc (named “OVNI” – the Spanish word for UFO) is mostly an acoustic affair, with some lap guitars, accordions and light percussion to keep things jingly-jangly.
It has 13 songs, the vast majority of which are in English, although a few are in Spanish and I personally like them better than the ones in English. These include the title track and “Extraterrestre” [Starling], the one true “band” recording that is offered.
And as far as the English contingent goes, I have a lot of time for “You Are A Demon”, “Until The End Of The Night” and “I Never Dance”. These are the cuts that have the brightest set of melodies. On the other hand, there is a thing called “No Evil” that almost made erase the whole thing from my HD and optimize it afterwards to ensure the monster was gone.
Obviously, how much you will enjoy “OVNI” depends on how tolerant you are to all-out acoustic albums.
Personally, I have always liked such music. And after having listened to “The Juliet Letters” in its entirety three times (the minimum number of times I listen to albums before reviewing them), my affinity for one-dimensional music went up astronomically. Either that, or I have learned not to give two shits about certain things.
The disc can be downloaded for free here. It was recorded by Gonzalo Petersen. In addition to Matías (who sings, plays acoustic and wrote everything), the personnel included María Angélica Gil (vocals), Pablo Montés (percussion), Nacho Echeverría (double bass and accordion), Leonardo Bianco (guitar) and Leroy Machado (lap steel).
Oh, and next time I promise to quote Longfellow correctly in the introduction. Scout’s honor.
This is Matías Singer’s MySpace profile.