“En Paralelo” is decidedly darker, with Fratti sawing and hacking her strings like Bernard Herrmann and talking-singing like Trish Keenan—and what follows, the diabolical “Te evite” , grows and thickens and worries deeply. dark forest The show got lost in it. Instead, we arrive at the grand “Palacio,” in which the piano strings climb five flights of stairs, over and over again, only to reach an agonizing suspension of strings, feedback, horns, and silence, then fall back down again. It's also frustrating, exciting and kind of funny. Fratti shares a sense of drama with intelligent singers like Nico, Björk, Kate Bush and Meredith Monk, but her songs often seem smaller in scale, small blossoms instead of vast fields of earth and sky.
However, the highlight of the album offers potential for growth. Clocking in at around seven and a half minutes, “Cielo Falso” is twice the size of most songs on the album, and you could imagine, say, Julia Holter swelling it into a full album. Or you could just play it on repeat, like I've been doing, admiring the way it crosses Vince Guaraldi and Fleetwood Mac as its friendly piano and hi-hat flourishes build up.
Gilgore hammers closer and closer on “Balanza,” his bold tone battling with Fratti's breathier as she proclaims and wails, “Siento una avalanche/Que cae sobre mi” (“I feel an avalanche / falling over me “). Vidrio she is willing to risk diving deep into ugliness, yet she manages to sidestep the quagmires of self-seriousness. “Está descalibrada la balanza” (“The balance is out of calibration”), he decides, but the song never breaks down. What could possibly sound wrong on another record – a long note swaying in and out, breaths of air moving in and out of her lungs, Tosta's occasional crazy filigree, Gibrán Andrade's drums dipping in and out of the pocket – Vidrio it sounds like rain. Nature does not make mistakes.
