Julieta Venegas - "Ese Camino"


What would you like from your new Julieta Venegas song?

A mad accordion hook?

A melody you can sing after one listen?

A mix of lyrical heart and head, melancholy and hope?

Check, check, check. You're welcome.

It's no secret the Club basically worships Venegas. As the kids would say, she's 'Mom'. Fittingly, "Ese Camino" speaks of maturity and childhood: not so much a parental lecture, but a meditation on the connection between our ever-dying cells and the soul that we carry around, whether we remember the details of it correctly, or not.

Venegas has created another punchy 'three-minuter' - like flash fiction - that rolls joyfully through all her incarnations since Sí. The electronic tweaks are still hiding underneath, but on the whole, this is Venegas back at her session band best. Unfortunately, there's no tantalizing glimpse of what may come with the album proper, Algo Sucede: will there be a surprising new direction? Will it be another solid follow-up album to the previous, refining what came before? We have until the end of August to find out, and we suppose until then we'll just have to hit repeat on this delightful return.

SALFUMÁN - “Futura Mujer”


On paper, Valencia-based multi-instrumentalist SALFUMÁN seems to fit the criteria as the next hip thing. Her debut EP, is stuffed with plenty of shiny, slinky sounds to score a neon-lit nightclub or a contemplative after-dusk drive. Each song can be described as synthpop and if you close your eyes, the whole thing might zip by as a nebulous lump of slithering synthesizers, electronic ornamentations, and percussion bounces.

Where the concept of SALFUMÁN (not one related to chlorhydric acid) best manifests itself, though, is in Sandra Rapulp’s wholehearted embrace of sounds that might scan as completely cheesy if paired with more banal sentiments. “Futura Mujer” is a great example. With Rapulp’s voice ramping up humidity, what SALFUMÁN can accomplish with a tonally consistent palette is astonishing and palpable.