Amor Elefante - Parque Miñaqui

Parque Miñaqui, Amor Elefante
Independiente, Argentina
Rating: 75
by Carlos Reyes

If Anglo indie music percolated into the mainstream by providing service to major automobile and snack advertising agencies, perhaps our Iberoamerican indie scene will have a similar fate. Last year, during a family trip to Disneyland, my 5-year-old niece shocked the hell out of me when she started humming the chorus of “Hoy Es Hermoso” by Amor Elefante, a band whose biggest exposure had been the inclusion of their lo-fi anthem “Nuevas Bienvenidas” in our Juventud Bruta compilation. Turns out the catchy tune entered households across the States as part of an ad campaign by Lowe’s (who have also featured Furland and Carla Morrison in their commercials).

While “Hoy Es Hermoso” didn’t quite make Amor Elefante a household name, it sure exposed their infectious-yet-unassuming pop melody to the great scale of entertainment. The Argentine band keeps making the right moves, investing the money earned from the TV spot into the production of their gorgeous-sounding sophomore effort, Parque Miñaqui. From its structure to its content, this is an album that beats happiness from its very core. Not a departure from nor an extension of their self-titled debut, Parque Miñaqui should provide the band with more than mere momentum.

Whether blooming melodies in orchestrated assemblies (“Es Amor” and “La Chaperona”) or baring them on reliable guitar pop hues (“Tu Vida Es Magica”), Amor Elefante can craft pop music that feels simultaneously sad and celebratory. “No quiero dejar de jugar,” sighs singer Rocio Bermandiner in “Todo Podemos.” But as the assembly of instruments progresses, the desire to play turns into a rallying cry (“no quiero dejar de llorar”), making for one very moving coming of age piece. At 12 tracks long (of similar tones and ambitions), Parque Miñaqui does acquire a formality that’s hard to associate to a youth’s blinking nature, but like everything in the album’s thematic playground, even this flaw registers as something charming in its own little way.

♫♫♫ “Todo Podemos” | Stream Album

Amor Elefante - Amor Elefante

Amor Elefante, Amor Elefante
Independiente, Argentina
Rating: 76
by Pierre Lestruhaut

There’s not much you can say about a band like Amor Elefante in terms of their background. A quick search will have you confronting a scarcity of information on their social network profiles, a few amateurishly shot live performances from a year ago on YouTube, and a couple of blog interviews where they seem to dismiss the usual boring questions with goofy and ironic answers. Which is why, just like it happens with a lot of stuff we review on CF, we’re left with the impossibility of building a write-up from the detritus of online criticism and blog posts. So, instead, we must figure out our own superlatives and references from whatever it is we were downloading last month.

Amor Elefante is not the type of band that makes this task particularly easy, although upon first listens you can tell that they're the sort of act that effectively assembles guitars, horns, and pop melody in a way that could fall somewhere between Tender Trap without the obvious C86 roots, The Lodger without the bittersweet anxiety issues, Carmen Sandiego without the witty remarks and sonic experimentation, or Aias without the lo-fi aesthetics. In other words, they sound just like most of your favorite recent indie pop acts stripped down to their rawest elements (i.e. sweet pop melodies), holding onto kid aesthetics as a solid groundwork that’s filtered through enough DIY, self-awareness, and playful naive musical sensibilities to the point that we can’t really figure out how much of an inside joke their self-proclaimed Xuxa influence really is, though the feeling most of their songs transmit is that very same whimsical indifference they display in their interviews.

Singing cheerfully along playful melodies about savoring the banality of life (“Hola” is pretty much about being invited to a party, and “Hoy es hermoso” is exactly what its title suggests it is), yet sounding even more joyful when they let cheery horns and wordless hooks attract all of the attention (“Fue Perfecta” and “Merienda Mucho”), while also being able to display a more passive approach to their songwriting as seen through their couple of piano pop ballads (“Desayuno un poco” and “Dejémoslo”). The album really makes a case for most lighthearted record of 2011, mainly because Amor Elefante have decided to simply shoo away all wistfulness and apprehension Stuart Murdoch might have ever given to indie pop, instead going for a very straightforward twee record that will make you love all the mundanities of life just as much as you love good infectious pop melodies.

♫♫♫ "Hoy es hermoso" | Facebook