Pajaros En La Cabeza＜Marbled Blue Vinyl＞

In November 2005, the annual Latin Grammy Awards were presented for the first time in Spanish. Besides making life easier for the artists giving their acceptance speeches, this move affirmed that just six years after their inception, the Latin Grammys have come into their own. Certainly the sheer size and increasing independence of the Spanish-language music industry helps to explain how the best-selling album for 2005 in Spain could receive a pop nomination but go otherwise unnoticed in the United States. That's one theory; the other that pops into mind when listening to Pajaros en la Cabeza, the fourth release by the Zaragoza pop duo Amaral, is that it's a Spanish thing. Perhaps it really does take being the first generation in nearly half a century to grow up free of Franco's dictatorship to find freshness in lyrics seemingly from the heyday of Sinatra and "My Way." Lead singer Eva Amaral and guitarist Juan Aguirre certainly love that phrase, along with "freedom," "my place," and the notion that their desires and feelings are unimaginable to an older Europe. "Esta Madrugada" is a lovely lament written as a response to the 3/11 bombings in Madrid, although other songs on Pajaros en la Cabeza lack the specificity to back generational posturing. In the occasional hushed moment, as when guest vocalist Enrique Morente opens "No Soy Como Tu" with a lush flamenco llamada, Pajaros begins to achieve texture or singularity. ~ Jenny Gage