SWEET ELECTRA- BLACKER TERCIOPELO… SINCE THEY ABANDONED MEXICO

Mexican music is hopping. While half-breed Lila Downs runs with the Frida Tehuana mantle and makes music more Mexican than the Mexican itself; and Brooklyn transplants Pistolera make better conjunto music than the Texicans themselves; and Mexican wanna-be Dan Zanes from Del Fuego (Ushuaia I think) makes the cutest music to satisfy the inner Mexican child in all of us… meanwhile real Mexicans ex-TJ No!/Mexpop superstar Julieta Venegas gets recast as an American indie and does duets with Nelly; and border-blasting bilingues Kinky and Nortec Collective play to large crossover audiences at festivals in LA; and Santana-buddy classicos Mana’ fill venues larger than the rest put together for hispanicos norteamericanos that the English-only audience in another US dimension neither knows about or apparently cares.

Then there’s Sweet Electra from Mexico City, now transplanted to New York City, and releasing their third album ‘The Day We Abandoned Earth’. Now there have always been cultural affinities between NYC and DF, though I’m not sure anyone noticed or cared except me and maybe the Spanish master filmmaker Luis Bunuel (Los Olvidados- ‘The Young and the Damned’- was made a full 4-5 years before ‘Rebel without a Cause’), but it’s there nonetheless- the density, the darkness, the death wish… and the artistry. Now I don’t really know what Sweet Electra did on their first two albums- neither the website nor MySpace are giving it up freely, and I can’t find anything on the shelves here in Antananarivo- but they came to the right place. This album is pure NYC, as NYC as Lou Reed or Laurie Anderson put together (yeah, I know), albeit without the hype or any other H’s… Lila may have the huipil Tehuana, but vocalist and co-composer Nardiz Cooke has the Mona Lisa smile (at least I think that’s a smile) and ‘programmer’ Giovanni Escalera has the multi-track feedback sensibility. The only question is: is it sustainable?

The album leads off with the ambiental ditty ‘Ignition’, and then moves right into their single ‘A Feeling’… ‘inside of me… forget about everything’ which pretty much sets the tone for the album, sparse but evocative lyrics and drum kit-driven ambience. ‘Love You More’ ups the emotional ante without really coming to any conclusion- ‘Every time I look at your empty face… I know I love you more… I didn’t mean to be this way, but I never thought I’d feel so empty…’, leaving us in a swirl of ethereal ambience and disembodied voices. ‘Backyard’ then leads us to the graveyard, crashing into chaos with strings- ‘I just wanna’ see the world from my backyard… see your face one more time. Is anybody out there…?’ ‘The Killer Silence’ is one of the album’s best tracks, with succinct lyrics- ‘the killing silence, the killing time, the killing loneliness, the killing words’- and a succinct melody… with good ol’ guitar. ‘I Am’ is a bit of an enigma, reintroducing the album and re-establishing the ambience with vocal wails over drum and keyboard-driven instrumentals, but then ‘It's Over’ returns to lyrical top dead center, the pain of love and the pain of just being- ‘I was wondering what would come next… I realized we’re together pretending… it’s all over, my love’.

The two parts of ‘Give Up’ then paint a beautiful, if stark, vision of life in the city, the first a percussion-driven version with guitars grating, the second a more orchestral version of the same thing. ‘Te Fuiste’ (‘You left’) seems to be thrown in almost as an afterthought- as if we gueros might not appreciate anything sung in espanol, but in fact is one of the albums better tracks, and if nothing else serves to prove that the sparseness of the English lyrics is not due to scarceness of English chops. The Spanish lyrics are sparse, too, not much more than road-signs to suggest something to meditate upon while you swim in the ambiance. After the spacey instrumental title track, another ‘DJ re-mix’ version of it and ‘It’s Over’ close the album… no comment. I’ve already expressed my feelings towards duplicative, if not duplicitous, ‘re-mixes’, AND THIS FROM AN ‘ELECTRONICA’ ALBUM! Fer Chrissakes, it’s all re-mix! Make up your m-f mind already! Maybe someday someone will come up with a musical ‘auteur’ theory to decide who gets the final ‘director’s cut.’ Maybe I’ll do that over lunch. ‘Re-mix’ tracks at the end of an album are starting to seem about as relevant as bloopers during a movie’s credits. How’s that for ‘no comment’?

But I like this album, even with its flaws, it settling in my mind somewhere at the crossroads of sub-conscious earth-bound pain and escapist ethereal ambiance. I can relate. Sometimes the only way to tolerate a world of human cruelty and incompetence is to create a parallel world of non-human perfection, whether it be mathematical precision or hyper-emotional ‘happy ending’ caricature. The crossroads and border areas are always fertile ground for creation and heterotic survival. To say that there’s a lot of repetition on this album would be to repeat the obvious (pun intended), but that’s not a criticism, just a ‘heads-up’. Repetition is one of the programmer’s tools, but if it all starts sounding like one never-ending song, then it’s time to go back to songwriting fundamentals of chorus and verse. Need another ‘H’ for New York? Consider ‘hooks.’ I ask again, “Is it sustainable?”

Of course there are other questions, too, like… does ‘electronica-twinged pop’ have to be sung in English, and… does it have to eschew all regional and historical influences? I doubt it. ‘Indie’ music certainly doesn’t. Café Tacuba has been doing that for years (but that voice!), and you’ve got to see ‘Maneja Beto’, an Austin group. And while you’re there, check out Del Castillo, who re-infuses ‘rock en espanol’ with classical Spanish guitar. Austin, that’s where I’ll be in a couple of weeks. See you at SXSW. Till then, check out Sweet Electra and ‘The Day We Abandoned Earth.” Because I said so, that’s why.