Selvatica "Macumba"

Selvatica "Macumba" (p)2019 Discos De Kirlian

If the album only managed to sustain the qualities of the first three tracks this would be the album of the year. I almost started my review with: "And while the country is desperately waiting for the debut Carolina Durante slab, the Album of the Year is already here". These tracks - namely "Quien Es La Sombra", "Solo Llueve En Mi Casa" and especially "Reino De Papel" - are the fast, sonorous, effervescent, ultra-melodic songs. But as the album flows by further it deviates from its initial course set by these amazing pieces and intrudes the air space of Her Majesty the Diversity with inclusion of saxo and tropical rhythms. There's nothing wrong with it and I really like saxo within the indie rock song context. So, all the subsequent tracks are good in their own right but as a result of the stylistic digressions the overall impression gets somehow blurred.

BNDCMP

FCBK

Maryland "Resplandor"

Maryland "Resplandor" (p)2018 Subterfuge

Everything changes.

Sometimes I am afraid of the changes cos they may be wrong. The guitar-based bands switch to synths. The rock bands start playing some sick jazz. The bands disband. The bands lose the members. The good bands leave the equally good labels. The musicians die. 

The Viguese alternative rock quartet Maryland didn't manage to avoid some changes - a couple of years ago they were a quintet, for instance. It's been too long since their last album "Los Años Muertos" to keep the things intact. But, fortunately, this didn't impact the the core things. They're still that loud and that melodic as they used to be, and they're still that Maryland I fell in love 5 years ago. Spearheaded by the Castelo brothers - Ruben (vocals, guitars) and Pablo (bass, backing vocals) - the band skipped over the past years and picked up right where they left off producing high quality alternative rock squeezed out of the junction of power pop and punk. In the ever-changing world this is kinda good news.

The best tracks: Disculpas Aceptadas, Sueño Lucido, Nueva York, Arde

FCBK

SPTF

SBTRFG

Trilitrate "Frutal Death"

Trilitrate "Frutal Death" (p)2016 Metamovida/ Nooirax

This is kind of strange music. The members of Metamovida collective (the Galician artistic commune that unites the underground bands such as diola, Cro!, Bala, Guerrera, IgMig amongst others) Ruben Abad (also of Cro!), Marcos Padron, Elena Vazquez and Laura Iturralde take a step into acoustic music built upon the instrumentation unusual for the habitual rock apparatus (even for the underground side of it). How many bands that use accordion you can count except for the Celtick punk sub-genre? That's really uncommon. I've never listened to anything like "Frutal Death" before. This is tiny fragile folkloric music - very quiet, trembling and mysterious. 

BNDCMP

FCBK