Mvd Luv＜限定盤/Mate Green vinyl＞

For his seventh solo outing, MVD LUV, singer/songwriter Juan Wauters returned to his birthplace of Montevideo, Uruguay, to record an album in loving tribute to the place where he grew up, something he’d always wanted to do but never had a chance to before now. Wauters explains this more or less exactly over a jaunty piano on “Amor Montevideo,” the short, spoken introduction that begins the album. While in Montevideo, Wauters enlisted a crew of backing musicians and collaborators from the region, bringing elements of Uruguay’s musical heritage into his lighthearted and exuberant songwriting. This can manifest as the Spanish-sung lyrics and persistent hand drum rhythms that join woozy synthesizers on “Manejando por Pando” or as a spontaneous launch into celebration on “La Lucia,” a song that adapts the regional communal music style and dance tradition candombe. While simple, minimalistic songs like “Acting Like I Don’t Know” or the zippy, major-key romp “If It’s Not Luv” sound like standard Wauters songs ornamented with instrumentation more common to Uruguayan music, the explosive drums and festive energy of closing track “Siempre Vuelven” feel more directly influenced by the environment the album was recorded in. On the whole, MVD LUV isn’t entirely new ground for Wauters. Even while he’s tapping into his native culture directly, the songs still experiment with unconventional recording techniques and synthesizer tones outside of anything traditionally Uruguayan. He even sneaks in one of his more blatantly Jonathan Richman-esque compositions on the wistful a cappella number “Lonely By Myself,” sounding especially American singing the song’s lovelorn, slightly dog-eared melody. There’s still a palpable excitement in MVD LUV that was missing on earlier Wauters albums, even those he made while traveling various countries, collecting sounds as he went. He sounds genuinely inspired to be interacting with the music and the culture of his birthplace, and his collaborations with the Montevideo musicians feel like humble attempts to integrate his own art with that of the place he comes from. It’s that excitement and the sincerity of Wauters’ creative mission that gives MVD LUV its inherent sweetness and makes it more than just another album of happy-go-lucky folk-pop numbers. ~ Fred Thomas