Cuentas Pendientes

Between 2013 and 2020, Enrique Bunbury issued four albums. All --- Palosanto, Expectativas, Posible, and Curso de Levitacion Intensivo -- explored the potentials of 21st century recording technology. He shifted his focus toward something more organic with 2023s Greta Garbo, but it remained a rock album. Cuentas Pendientes, by contrast, is a departure and continuation with more austere production. Bunbury employs mostly organic instruments (no synths) with songs rooted in Spanish, Mexican, Latin American, and Brazilian sounds. That said, rock & roll remains at the heart of these tracks. Bunbury recorded in Mexico with co-producer/drummer Ramon Gacias. The musicians include Jorge Rebenaque on accordion and keyboards (pianos and organs), Sebastian Aracena on guitars, Luri Molina on contrabass, and Johnny Molina on percussion. Check the mutant tango on opener "Para Llegar Hasta Aquí." Bunbury recalls travels, losses, and emotions as electric piano, nylon-string guitars, and hand percussion are guided by the double bass. He is invested in the lyric and at one point offers a prayer: "When everything falls apart/Something new grows inside you/Free me from bondage...." The second tune, "Saliendo del Arrabal," is a jaunty folk song played with verve; the listener is transported to an intimate barroom as the band plays together for pleasure. The Afro-Cuban bolero groove in "Las Chingadas Ganas de Llorar" utilizes a steamy electric guitar and organ in framing a lyric of unwavering commitment. "Serpiente" offers swaggering rock-inspired flamenco in a literary narrative of betrayal, anger, and disgust. "Loco" returns to bolero, with percussion and piano leading the accompaniment. The double bass plays the changes as Bunburys growl winds around them with amorous intensity, "As if hidden/Behind the fold of some corner/In your gaze/The world is only a profile...." The sequencing is seamless; each track feels a like a segue with careful attention paid to time and textural elements. The title track (that translates to Accounts Pending), is a tango-fied electric guitars in a nearly processional role under Bunburys gritty, grainy, majestic delivery. Set highlight "Te Puedes a Todo Acostumbrar" is a bumping cumbia with creative percussion and biting electric guitar runs. Its followed by the bossa-tinged "La Hiedra," a broken love song that moves across the Brazilian rhythms to touch on ranchera. "Como Una Sombra" moves between tango and a cantina song; it underscores its predecessors sentiment with an intoxicating meld of flamenco and reverbed surf guitars, chorus vocals, and a hypnotic rhythmic signature that is in essence, a desert bolero. Closer "El Baile de los Disfraces y la Tentación" is an intimate, hornless mariachi-tinged paean to maintaining ones dignity and independence no matter what fate has in store. Its steely in its determination. Bunbury has traveled many roads musically, but Cuentas Pendientes moves further afield stylistically than most of his records. In utilizing Latin-American, Mexican, Spanish, and Aragonian genres and rhythms, Bunbury, in his own iconic style, delivers a visionary, poetic album. ~ Thom Jurek