By José Gandue @Gandour
It rings for the fourth, fifth, or sixth time Thin Skin, by the Uruguayan singer Romina Peluffo on my device. Each time I discover another feature that completes the puzzle that was established the first time I played it. It's the second album of an artist who decided to enter the recording industry in 2018 at the age of forty, And it's as if, after all that time, this woman decided to bring out everything she had kept hidden throughout her life and expose it, backing up her accumulated maturity and the still existing desire to tell the world what it deserves. It's a rock album that, with all that implies, sheds the adolescent baggage that weighs on other recordings of the genre. And it goes straight to the viewer's neck to shake him, to stir him in his lethargy, to tell him that, regardless of age, it is time to tremble again without shame, there is no life to lose.
Thin Skin It's a varied album, which, with a western nostalgia, begins with Like horses, a theme where Peluffo poetically and sensually marks each step of his verses, which seem to be sung against the wind, with an inquisitive gentleness that gradually dismantles any reservations the listener might have about a new voice, Letting themselves be enveloped by the charming details of the Rioplatense pronunciation of the letter Y, and clearly hearing each phrase uttered like a lesson delivered at the precise moment, regardless of when the tune is played. But if the viewer thought it was going to be a calm journey, they arrive He's not leaving and forces everyone into sudden movement, everyone to shout!. Here, rage longs to dance in our throats. And then Nothing, a melodic pause where, without any anesthesia, the singer warns us that «"Nothing will change because you don't want to change, nothing will change because you don't know how to pray.", remembering fragments of compositions by Christina Rosenvinge and other leading figures in Iberian female pop rock from recent decades. And suddenly, Peluffo changes the tempo, the electric guitar enters sharply, the artist hardens her vocal cords, and the tone darkens when she sings in English. Didn't see it coming. From then on, everything unfolds like an eclectic but never incoherent roller coaster, where, regardless of the climbs and flats we traverse during the listening experience, The route is well established, always requiring the audience not to be distracted, not to divert their attention.
And we come to the last cut, the tenth of the entire production. Autumn song, a song of just over five minutes, which seems to be the compendium of the entire journey, the summary of everything experienced, where exasperation and tenderness come together and are soothed in their contradictory love, where the singer seems to thank us for having been able to tell us her story, to inspire us and accompany us, holding our hand, only to let go and tell us at the end, «"Everything will be alright.". It is there, inevitably, when beautiful greed overwhelms us and we want to hear it all again. That, my friends, is a great feeling that few albums give us these days.
