By José Gandue @Gandour Photos @daviddbarajas @gisselarv
Before showering this production with praise (which, let's be clear, deserves it all), we must say that Stimulating disc, the most recent album by the Mexican group Hello Seahorse!, It arrives in time to check something that needs to be corrected somehow, and that's it. It is clear that many of the best-developed projects in the musical field in Latin America, despite being popular in their country of origin, do not receive the attention they deserve in the rest of the continent. And what's even more incredible is what happens with this band, with singer Denise Gutiérrez at the helm, whose catalog of songs exceeds expectations with its sensitive compositional construction, its striking lyrics and the perfect balance they establish between sonic experimentation and the powerful pop result of their recordings.
Of course, Hello Seahorse hadn't released a full album since 2012. And only in all this time had they released a live album in 2017 celebrating their ten years of existence, But during 2019 he had released three of the singles that would appear on this new release, Fire, Domino y Women, which gave a clear indication of the refinement of the compilation they were going to release this year. In short, instead of continuing to complain about the injustice, it's time to affirm that We are faced with an emotional piece, which knows how to balance the clear Anglo-Saxon influences from the eighties with the updated inclusion of electronic textures in each of its themes. But, after much deliberation, we discovered something that has been there from the beginning, and because it's so right in front of us, we sometimes get lost in the noise and ignore it: Gutiérrez's voice is unique and special. There are plenty of good singers across the continent's musical spectrum; it's easy to name dozens, even hundreds, of examples. But Gutiérrez possesses the ability to bring a unique classical style to the table., an expression that we might hear in a similar, almost exact, way in works made decades ago, In the style of the best eras of Spanish and Italian ballads, bringing to mind artists like Mari Trini, Cecilia, Gigliona Cinquetti, and Rosa Leon. Perhaps the lead singer of Hello Seahorse!, had she been born seventy years ago, could have sung during the Sanremo Festival's greatest moments, but we were fortunate that she is our contemporary and that we can enjoy her these days singing on stage lyrics like those in her song. Women:
«"I wanted to sing so many things
But I lost my memory
Where the sea peeked into your eyes
I would like to embrace your face, worthy of the perfect pulse
But I'm not that.
I will be able to draw you with words
I recognize you in the reflections
And in flashes of sunlight, woman, you are immortal.»
For a little over forty minutes, we can revel in an album that skillfully blends delicacy with maturity, elegance with boldness. Here, there's an exciting balance between knowing how to do what the body and spirit dictate and, on the other hand, the desire to captivate a wide audience, eager for sounds they can happily get lost in. In the end, Stimulating Disc It gives us the opportunity to reconcile ourselves with that risky facet of the Mexican music scene, which sometimes seems asleep on commercial laurels, but which, luckily, contains happy moments of contradiction and experimentation like those that Hello Seahorse! brings on this occasion. In short, here we have an album that makes us confident in the quality of the music coming this year from this side of the world.