Montevideo Mondays (XXII)
Better late than never.
Diego Rebella seems to be sick of many things since a lot of time. He is sick with the noisey motorbike riders of his neighbourhood, with the sad people who doesn´t read the news and also with Montevideo as a city. It may be surprising, since Rebella´s previous efforts as a solo artist (which followed a single record with his noise-pop-mostly Radiohead influenced band called Sinatras) tend to be more personal and, in a way, quiet.
But those two previous records (Guadalupe 1994 in 2010 and La vida de los árboles in 2013) mainly based in guitar and voice songs now seem to be a previous -“necessary”, the artist will say- to reach some intensity levels that are evident in his new A L A S K A, his first album recording with a new producer at the helm, Ezequiel Rivero (if you want to know about local indie music producers you may start with his works with many local artists). In A L A S K A, Rebella keeps his singer-songwriter soul but the intensity of his new sound seems to match with the more pure anger and irony that feelings this record puts on display.
The music from Rebella, a songcrafter with a delicate voice with other strong obsessions such as John Cale, R.E.M., Wilco, Bill Callahan or local songwriting heroes Fernando Cabrera and Eduardo Darnauchans, seems to travel alongside the record from the style of those previous records to a slick blend of rock styles and other sounds that went into the mix to give the last songs of this new record a different essence. All that stuff sets the musical environment for reflections such as “Where is the lucidity / when you die working? / What do you want when you`re thirty? / the credits of the movie”.
In a way, listening to this new Diego Rebella album allows to identify a bunch of layers to observe from the more local, mature approach of the lyrics to some sound experiments that worked well. It´s easier to say now that Rebella is reaching a level that allows to place him in a place of relevance among the acts that are the most successfully trying to push the boundaries of our prolific, bandcamp-based musical scene in pursuit of broader audiences.
You can hear A L A S K A here.
