Album: Songbook. Artist: Natalia Lafourcade. Themes: “Opening song”, “songbook”, “Cocos on the beach”, “As I would like to love you (feat. David Aguilar)”, “clandestine love” (feat. Israel Fernández), “Crystal mascaritas”, “El Coconito” (feat. David Aguilar), “El Palomo and La Negra”, “Cariñito de Acapulco”, “The Witch” Songbook), “Crescent moon” (feat. Brothers Gutiérrez) and “tears songbooks.” Edición: Sony Music. Qualification: Excellent.
Natalia Lafourcade He plays in a league where he has no rivals. Not because it is better than the rest, but because it is difficult to find someone with similar characteristics in the music industry. He is an unparalleled artist. It can be seen in the lists of the most important music awards without theirs fit with what the rest does. And it imposes itself. In his career he has reaped four Grammy awards, eighteen Latin Grammy and five MTV Video Music Awards Latin America.
The mutation of his art -from the first album, which brought his name, crossed by a bossa chill And a certain electro-pop pulse, until his most recent album- has been maturation. And if from the tribute production made in 2012 to Agustín Larahis Mexicanism deepened. He has left and entered that Mexico in diverse ways, looking for roots, challenging his Veracruz spirit. With each production he took a step forward, from which they were evocative of the songbook to which they brought their own production. And in that line, this Songbookwho has just published, is one of his most precious gems.
As for that of the awards, Lafourcade ever gets into the same walks as the rest, ever nothing in the same waters (it is true that he has done so at the beginning of his career) and the more personal shows, the more fascination awakens with his art. He has had time to close the doors of his house, to confuse and clarify, to open the windows again and let the sun enter. And every time he has done it, it has been with total certainty that while the world of large -scale music industry sounds in a key, she continues in her pentagram and redouble bets.
This time it is with an analog recording disc, made by direct cut (that is, the instruments are not separated) and with an exquisite orchestration, which has left the best suit for your voice. Always colorful, as you usually see. With grace and happiness (“Cocos on the beach”), or with that nostalgic mood and at the same time as an expression of desire (how I would like to love you “), that which is usually transmitted in Mexican songs, so classic, of rhythms in three times. And of course the bolero, which in several sections is imposed with its specific weight. There are very classic forms, such as “clandestine love” and others, such as “glass face”, which are almost a satire that gets half tango, in which the protagonist specifies an absent love, epithets of the type, “so far away your strategy of increasing some likes, covering up your lies, glass masks.” It becomes a thong mourner, which connects imaginary with classics of a very distant south, that would have left the inventiveness of the Expósito brothers.
There is also an Andalusian touch that crosses all this stew, succulent, tasty. The album has 12 tracks and has a pair of bonus, which are themes already included in the list, but in other versions. They are called acoustic, although, perhaps, the difference does not lie in that but in an aesthetic shift that does with artists like Diego del Morao. The version that Natalia makes with the Jerez musician “clandestine love”, is a real pearl inside the album. It also participates, as in the original version that is a bolero, Israel Fernández, and Lafourcade runs with them towards flamenco, with total naturalness.
