GRASA DE LAS CAPITALES

After a very interesting and revealing debut album that, all things considered, didn't fulfill its potential completely, Serú Girán continued to move on taking advantage of the gradual momentum that they were building with domestic audiences. By the time that they released their second album La Grasa de las Capitales, the music press and the rock fans had generally named them as the new heroes of Argetinean rock. This album had a more aggressive sound, a more robust playing and a tighter set of compositional ideas, which only came to confirm and enhance this new found apple of the public's eye. There are two main facts to take into acccount: the orchestral tendencies are mostly gone and the writing structures tend to bear less ambitious sturctures, but contrary to what one might expect from these descriptions, the album is more cohesive than its predecessor under the standards of art-rock. The namesake opener and 'Un Perro Andaluz' are pretty much centered around the cadences of jazz-pop: the former incorporates effective elements of funk and disco (mosly for humorous purposes) in order to create a frantic mood; the latter revolves around introspective moods, while retaining a similar colorfulness (worth mentioning is the terrific bass solo that sets the pace for the instrumental interlude). The Latin-jazz spirit of 'Frecuencia Modulada' is highly motivated by Moro's immaculate drumming and Lebón's excellent acoustic guiar leads: I wouldn't have minded that this anthem against the pandemic, perpetual banality of commercial pop had lasted a bit longer than its 3 minute span, but it bears enough punch as it is. Among this display of energy and sensuality in an elegant art-rock guise lies the short, delicate acoustic ballad 'San Francisco y el Lobo', a beautiful moment of meditation. The first symphonic-oriented track in the album is the Aznar-penned 'Paranoia y Soledad', a power ballad in which he played almost all keyboards together with his usual bass role: at first listen it may seem too meandering and boring, but repeated listenes will find a refined structured and a fluid evolution of the main motif. The only real meandering part is the sung interlude, which I find unnecessarily overlong. More successful in terms of compositional structure is the other power ballad 'Noche de Perros', one of the finest Lebón moments ever. This track bears a very Floydian sound in its spacey moods, which make sense with the existentialist thoughts portrayed in the lyrics: the final guitar solo is just amazing, floating and expanding itself over the dreamy synth layers and piano arpeggios. Actually, the album's second half is my fave part, and 'Noche de Perros' brought an exquisite overture. Track 6 is yet another ballad, less pompous than the previous two, more intimate, and that's accordingly to the suicide theme of the lyrics: this track will set a paradigm for future Serú Girán pieces as well as early Charly garcía's solo albums. The third and last symphonic-based track in the album is the majestic 'Los Sobrevivientes', a well-constructed kaleidoscope of segued motifs that go from tango-fusion to Baroque to Romanticism to Gershwin-style textures. García really shines as a composer here, and he will continue to do so for the album's closure 'Canción de Hollywood'. This one brings airs of jazz-fusion, traditional ballad and symphonic rock in a similarly concise scheme as in the previous track, only less adventurous and with a more agile swing all the way through: elaborated with noticeable overtones of art-rock, this song provides a very good farewell for an excellent album in terms of mood, melody and clever developments.