Sonidos de Karmatica Resonancia＜Colored Vinyl＞

After the two lengthy intervals that preceded Zoes last two albums, the Mexican band was on track for the usual cycle of touring and recording when the pandemic threw a spanner in the works. Their seventh studio album, Sonidos de Karmatica Resonancia, was meant to be completed in mid-2020, a mere two years after the Grammy-winning Aztlan (2018), but the band had to stop recording in March and could only physically reconvene in September to finish the proceedings in a couple of weeks. Even if its track list doesnt exactly correlate with the actual recording chronology, SKR also has the distinct feel of being an album of two halves. The first half is frontloaded with flawless Zoe singles, heavily indebted to indie pop of the late 80s and early 90s, and brimming with driving synthesizer riffs and textures, and eminent melodies all infused with the trademark romantic longing of Leon Larreguis voice and lyrics. Velur neatly compresses this formula into its first minute-and-a-half: the intro bears more than a passing resemblance to the Cures In Between Days, and as soon as Larregui starts to sing it is impossible not to conjure the ghost of Gustavo Cerati, so similar are his timbre, vocal mannerisms, and even his lexicon, to the late Soda Stereo frontman. The second half of SKR is a bit more uneven. As opposed to the unified front end presented by the initial salvo, the rest of the album offers a series of nods to different strands of Zoes sonic legacy, as if the band want to reassure their fans (or perhaps themselves) that they have not turned into a singles-only machine. Besides being one of the few tracks built upon predominant acoustic guitars, Cancion de Cuna para Marte fulfills the mandatory cosmic song spot, Tepoztlan is a close cousin to the Aztec world of Aztlan, Ese Cuadro no Me Pinta references the space rock of Pink Floyd augmented with tribal drumming, and Bestiario wraps things up with some social commentary. To their credit, the band never sound like theyre on autopilot: so much attention is paid to the fine details in the songwriting and the production, not to mention the vibrancy in the execution. In short, SKR is a standard late-period Zoe album with the extra bonus of adding a slew of sure-fire hits (SKR, Fiebre, Karmadame, and Velur) to the bands already impressive set list. ~ Mariano Prunes