La Perla Irregular
América

One of the most beautiful albums of the past year is there, timidly nestled on some Bandcamp server in the Pampas, so light and delicate that it doesn't even dare to ask for a payment to be downloaded. Ok, there are tons of free albums on the internet, but they are usually poorly recorded junk or so bad that they're thrown at you; this album doesn't seek you, doesn't ask you to like it on Facebook or to fund it through crowdfunding in exchange for an autographed t-shirt; it's just there, and if you download it, good for you. And we're talking about an album where 19 (nineteen) musicians worked, recorded over a long year in a recovering country (Argentina) where Argentine beef costs a lot. But why so much pettiness? I don't know, I find it miraculous that an album like this is given away when in Italy, any loser who records a song with an iPad asks you for a euro and then maybe "pay me for a piece of the recording, and I'll give you a photo with a dedication on Facebook," but who cares, well, we understand each other.

 So, here's what you take home with zero euros:

Over an hour of sunshine-pop all enhanced by prog structures that sometimes verge on the metamusical ("Ella te ama" will make you think you've accidentally pressed the song loop on your iPod, but in reality, the track ends and starts again a couple of times, a stroke of genius), then when you least expect it, that little pop gem "Màs que Amigos" starts, which will remind you of a thousand songs from your past but actually not a single one, and then did I tell you there are violins? Cascades of violins, the beautiful ones though, the intricate ones from the pop of yesteryear, and the brass? In how many free albums do you hear brass like this? Protagonists in constructing the pieces or delicate counterpoints to all the wonderful parts of crystalline, elegant guitars, and then when you least expect it, a little chorus that seems to have come from that Beach Boys record you can't remember the title of, and could there possibly be a missing Beatles reference? Of course not, and when the album drifts into the restrained pop psychedelia of those who know how to write just the right twisted songs, those four come to mind, but then here comes that somewhat but not too tango piano that takes you elsewhere, and before you have time to love it, an accordion captures your attention at least until a perfect melody drives you to search for where this angelic music could come from, and you discover that the main inspiration for this album is Luis Alberto Spinetta, the Alan Sorrenti of Buenos Aires, and then there's that guitar solo that seems played by a David Gilmour stuffed with fajitas, recovering just in time to enjoy the epic psychedelic riff of "Dios es una càmara", the emotional peak of an album that makes you dream, at zero cost.

That's why I will send a transfer to these brilliant pop musicians who know how to draw from the past with shameless class, I would never want the high cost of meat and Parmalat bonds not to allow them to bring to life another brilliant cauldron of sumptuous, exquisite pop.