NUEVA AMERICA, QUIERO CLUBHappy-Fi, México ****
Rating: 85
By Carlos Reyes
It’s been almost a year since the release of their leading single “Showtime”, the happiest act from Monterrey comes back with the long awaited Nueva America. Quiero Club are part of the Happy-Fi collective, which is all about pastel colors and the youthful sparkles of the lost children. Their first album Wof took Mexico’s indie movement by surprise, in the middle of a rock explosion lead by Zurdok, a little song was contrasting the current, “No Coke” is silly and meaningless, but it was ok to hold it and embrace it, we had found fluorescent in between all the grayish and dark colors. The album is to date, a refreshing experience that even though is uneven, for the moment aims for the ageless pop made in Latin America, their new album points to that direction as well. Five backgrounds collide in a powerful sophomore album where they seem to survey the sounds of Latinoamerica, attempt to redefine their globalized approach from their previous work and superglue them together to outline a new continent, Nueva America. Fluently cycling between Spanish and English, all pieces are subversive in their own way, this time they are re-entering a solidified MySpace culture that has already met Girl Talk, CSS or even the Vivian Girls, these guys have made a brilliant move by globalizing our region. The opener “It’s all about Dun Dun” shows no content vision, a 7-minute voyage to an electrified beach, perhaps Acapulco, and the summation of a joyful saxophone seasoning the piece. Legendary Jorge Gonzales (Los Prisioneros, Los Updates) collaborates in “Minutos de Aire”, which resembles “We are sudamerican rockers” and by that moment I was pretty sure of Quiero Club’s intended target. The singles “Showtime” and “The Flow” summarize the band’s ability to enlarge melodies that will get reactions from all urban musical tribes, from the rockers to the conventional petite girls. Make sure you check out their videos, in color or black & white, they’re tremendous.