107 Faunos - Últimos días del tren fantasma

Últimos días del tren fantasma, 107 Faunos
Discos Laptra, Argentina
Rating: 83
by Carlos Reyes

“A regression in concept and pop veracity” –was my response to 107 Faunos’ promotional cut “Cosas Caras Rotas.” As a sole offering, the one-minute-and-a-half track seemed half-cooked and antagonistic to what had been accomplished in the expansive greatness of previous single “El Tigre de las Facultades” (from El tesoro que nadie quiere). Fragile and unconvincing as a single, one comes to realize 107 Faunos was actually winking at all of us offering an anti-single of sorts –one that’s difficult for non-fans to grab and challenging for bloggers to articulate about. “Cosas Caras Rotas” acquires visibility and a whole yarn of virtue as part of Últimos días del tren fantasma, the third LP (going by the amount of tracks rather than running time) and most accomplished record the Argentine band has offered us thus far.

Do we have to keep digging into the intentions behind 107 Faunos’ obsession at crafting snippets rather than round songs? Maybe we should embrace the cult and look past it already, but when a band attains to a reputation of not following recognizable structures, the critic must consider this as an earnest provocation (at the very least). The band surpassed the three-minute mark not once but twice on their last EP, which redirected us to calling it their most adult record yet. With their latest record, the band rejects prescribed expectations keeping the tracks near the two-minute mark. Unfortunately there isn't a grand peak single for the masses. This doesn’t mean the band is rewinding on the maturity of their discourse, if anything, it strengthens their artistic assertion. Not that it makes the music any less subversive (the lyrics for one can get to be quite eccentric).

Últimos días del tren fantasma doesn’t acquire greatness just because the band sticks to its guns. Their previous works seemed to shade away into existential despair, but this time around they’re employing human effort as the vehicle to encounter grandeur. And by this, I’m referring to the warmth and execution of their unlikely melodies. Take for example, the improvement of Javier Sisti Ripoll’s vocals in this record. The man still has a near-unpleasant voice, but listen at how he expands his voice to parallel the lyrics in the intro. “Vision de aire que agiganta y enfurece las cosas,” he sings as he swells and raptures his low voice to a near falsetto. In “Por ir a comprar” the chord progressions escalate to the stars, and in “Jazmín chino,” they somehow trigger your sense of smell through your ears. Like the burgeoning of the vocals, it seems just about every other technical element (not to mention the aesthetics) of 107 Faunos has come of age.

All of us critics love to conclude middling album reviews hinting potentially better things to come. But in all honesty, that rarely happens. It’s refreshing to see a band grow in their discourse and diegesis as opposed to the usual band that knocks it out of the park with a debut album and follows it with variants of decay. 107 Faunos’ nuanced journey makes for a better story. If something had us reviewing each one of their releases throughout the years (without us ever really raving about them) was the promise that sustained the uncalled, perhaps expandable empathy towards the understated band. Mostly whimsical, although at times on a deadpan tone, Últimos días del tren fantasma hardly negotiates with the zeitgeist or the idiosyncratic. In fact, they chop the spacious discourses of their much-celebrated peers (Él Mató a un Policía Motorizado, Valentín y Los Volcanes, Los Reyes del Falsete) and not only get away with it, but sound truly proud of their own bearings.

107 Faunos - "Cosas Caras Rotas"

Unless you’re Rodrigo Maceira (from Si No Puedo Bailar/Gente Que Viene) or Andres Murillo (Sr. Amable), chances are you have a love/hate relationship with 107 Faunos. Although we’ve never truly celebrated any of their releases, it’s one of the few bands to which we’ve cared enough to review their entire discography (107 Faunos, Creo Que Te Amo, El Tesoro Que Nadie Quiere). Talk about a cult band. The longitude of promise and signs of progress make us dig in and articulate on a band that seemed to have outgrown past subversive obsessions (minimal hooks, minimal timings, etc). Their newest single “Cosas caras rotas” off their forthcoming fourth record is a regression in concept and pop veracity from what was accomplished with career-best single “El Tigre de las Facultades.” Pretty damn difficult resisting tapping your foot during its short span though. A very personal, if not convincingly bold, sneak peak of what’s to come.

107 Faunos - El tesoro que nadie quiere

El tesoro que nadie quiere, 107 Faunos

Independiente, Argentina

Rating: 71

by Pierre Lestruhaut



Think, just for a moment, of everything that’s ever happened in the history of indie pop, all the time and space that’s been traveled to go all the way from early Beat Happening hand-drawn cover art, kid aesthetics, careless vocals, and cute effortless melodies into 107 Faunos’ hand-drawn cover art. You can now assume just how serious and devoted indie pop fans are about this type of things. Because if you happen to have friends who are into it, or if you’re a pop geek yourself, then you probably know what I’m talking about, and those friends are probably also into a cute p!o!p! act like 107 Faunos.



Back in 2008, the Argentine band’s self-titled debut was, in absolute twee fashion, fueled by an obsession with childhood imagery, using memory-triggering lines such as “saltás con el A, disparás con el B,” song titles like “Calamar Gigante #8,” and of course a cover art you’re super talented 10 year-old niece might have drawn. Then its follow-up, Creo que te amo, as Carlos Reyes said in his review of it, was more about the “themes and topics of the adolescent years, where uncertainty overshadows positivism,” thus seeing the band’s interests parallel the aging of a person. Now, with their latest EP, El tesoro que nadie quiere, we’re treated to what’s perhaps their most adult record yet, one that’s still packed with that youthful energy, yet is also a lot more paced and developed in its execution and overall structure.



In the album, the kids from La Plata surprisingly go over the 3-minute mark twice, delivering what’s clearly their most laid-back and least amateurish songs so far in “El tigre de las facultades” and “Panchito en Hawaii.” But it’s while playing their catchiest tunes that the band sounds even more compelling. Like the subsequent series of “Con y contra,” “Boxeador mejicano” and “Cachorros,” where in less than 2 minutes per track they manage to drop the finest vocal hooks we’ve heard from them so far. Yet the greatest song here is probably “Modelos de prueba,” which is another very short number, where this time Heavenly-esque guitar lines meet Casio-style keyboard in an exciting mingle of early and late indie pop.



Because it’s precisely of this sort of digging through a genre’s past as a way to enhance its future that 107 Faunos are singing to us here (“buscamos el futuro escondido en el pasado”), while still pointing out the inevitable fate of constantly being deemed as inferior to it (“soy un Bart Simpson mal dibujado”). It’s with this sort of highbrow meets lowbrow subtext that 107 Faunos can be a very exciting act to listen to and, even if this latest release might not be as rich, both lyrically and melodically, as those of our favorite South American indie pop acts, it’s always great to see a band trying to leave their comfort zone and escape from their genre's most obvious clichés.

♫♫♫ "El Tigre de las Facultades" | Download EP | Facebook

Creo Que Te Amo, 107 Faunos

Creo Que Te Amo, 107 Faunos
Discos Laptra, Argentina
Rating: 70
by Carlos Reyes

While not every band in the world wants to make a statement with their timing, it is quite noticeable whenever a band doesn’t seem to want (or be able) to make songs longer than two minutes. This is the case of Argentina’s 107 Faunos, a band that serves from a generation’s urgency and need for flashy, short-lived experiences, including our encounter with rock music in an era The Strokes have classified as “the modern age.” Creo Que Te Amo is the band’s second album, an appetizing 14-track record that puts the Buenos Aires band on a safe, yet compelling ground.

The album’s title is a great companion of my timing rule theory; a generation’s fear to commitment and overstatement is immediately suggested. The themes and topics of Creo Que Te Amo are those of the adolescent years where uncertainty overshadows positivism, which is why the band probably starts the album with the weirdly profane “Scottie Pippen y Yo.” The album follows with mostly unexpected numbers where the band shows as much eclecticism as many of today’s avant-pop practitioners (Star Slinger, En Ventura, Girls, to name a few). The band has the right amount of instrumental backbone, charismatic vocals and cool aesthetics, but it misses actual melody. “Noche Spooky Tropical” is the album’s most obvious ‘single’, and although great at deconstructing guitars, it submerges melody to the point it becomes aloof.

Where the band does triumph is at processing a post-punk sensibility that takes them outside the lo-fi nugget territory and into more stable ground. Not to say they’ve turn into a standard mature act, “Muchachita” still breathes garage nostalgia, and it’s got plenty of cowbells as well. Sometimes the band is so comfortable that they end up in truly unsuspected places, “La Gloria Secreta” totally sounds like something from the 31 Minutos repertoire. The best tracks in the album come at very end (“Movimiento de las Montanas” & “El Jefe de los Malos”), where they leave the monotone prototypes behind and find strength in group-shouting choruses. It’s the intensity that counts, not the lasting seconds, enough for an "I think I love You" record.

♫♫♫ "El Jefe de los Malos"
Download Full Album
MySpace

107 Faunos, 107 Faunos

107 FAUNOS, 107 FAUNOS
Discos Laptra, Argentina ***
Rating: 62
By Carlos Reyes

We are witnessing a moment of enlightenment and constellations in several music regions in Latin America. It’s almost as if a musical wave had crashed into towns proclaiming interpreters to go back to prime colors. 107 Faunos joins fellow Prietto Viaja Al Cosmos Con Mariano and El Mato A Un Policía Motorizado as the leading evangelists of this movement in Argentina. All three bands not only share nationality but also peculiar laziness in the vocals. It almost seems like 107 Faunos is staring at conventionality and trying to defy it, the outcome isn’t extraordinaire or even concrete, but it’s like the weird favorite cousin we all love because of his distinctiveness. This is their debut album and while they are no where near the complexity of the trip Prietto and Mariano offer us, this album is said to be a key production on the emergence of a rock independent scene in Argentina, and that’s why I’m taking the time to review it. Sounds denigrating, but if I had a cat and that cat liked music, this is the kind of laidback songs he would be listening to. The instrumentation is at times very eloquent, especially on songs like “Constelaciones” and “John Henry”, designed for the garage. The most exciting song here is “Pequeña Honduras”, is the only song that truly conveys a sense of irrationality as opposed to effortless music. While the song “Nenes de Mama” sums up the entire proposal of the band, an instrumental song with a plain and simple interference of a male’s voice reflecting “We are mama’s boys, with time and madness, we will make our wish come true and we are willing to do what it takes.” This might be a bit too hard to digest, give it time and it might have an impact on you, I myself struggled with it, but at the end I found a cute little musical exercise that I would have preferred as an EP.

♫♫♫ "Pequeña Honduras"
MySpace