By José Gandue @Gandour
The artist must understand that their role is not to please the audience but, rather, to shake consciences., to inconvenience, to confirm enemies, to create discomfort. If the artist doesn't destabilize the territory from time to time, he becomes a mere entertainment agent, a court jester., a clown of conformity. The artist must take risks when the landscape becomes debased and when they sincerely want to challenge the ruling power. One can be at the top of the charts, in the flourishing brilliance of fashionable courts, exploiting the most financially fertile paths, but if rebellion is extinguished, especially in the face of cruel and torturous realities, What follows is simple posing and sophisticated disgust.
It's 2017 and Fito Páez has understood its place in the contemporary world. In Argentina (and in the rest of the world) Bad people are no longer ashamed to be proud of their evil deeds. Now those who relish the misfortune of others parade themselves in the streets, seeking to inflict pain for their shameless delight. And so, amidst this panorama, with a high probability of receiving insults and spittle from those who are in power today, Páez takes a gamble, shakes off a certain lethargy he'd been carrying in recent years, and decides to fight back., through beautiful songs and necessarily satirical and vulgar language. It features 18 tracks where, in a profoundly impactful and intelligent way, it pulls no punches and challenges the world with love and rage. That's it. The Liberated City, Perhaps the album we've been waiting for to feel that this year couldn't pass without having a defiant voice, that shakes the foundations and makes us believe that what is happening cannot continue like this.
The Liberated City It is a complex album where Páez goes from celebrating female empowerment (Hallelujah to the sun), and present sensuality and infatuation using Beatlesque textures (Wo wo wo), until it convulses the listener with precise explosions and places the viewer in the midst of planetary misfortune (Islamabad) or to mock those who, out of rampant selfishness, despise him (The gorilla attack). We listened Your life, my life, created in collaboration with Fabiana Cantilo, and we return to the magical moments of previous years, where that kind of "Argentine-style" progressive rock formula continues to work and excite us. But a few minutes later, Black Christmas It presents a delusional and denunciatory perspective that reflects, as we recently saw in the news, Some beings who claim to be human, yet mocked the most recently deceased («"There's a ghost flying through the streets/People are going crazy/Wild Buenos Aires"»). The Liberated City It's an album written and recorded in the middle of a country where many have been infected by hatred and wish for the unhappy disappearance of the other. Páez presents his album perhaps believing that love (although it should always be there) is not enough to combat the greedy: The resistance must be less naive and more cutting in its response.
In short, Fito Páez presents a compilation of beautiful, powerful, poignant, and daring songs., that dust off the best moments of their career and presents him as the necessary, courageous artist we were waiting for.
