Creo Que Te Amo, 107 FaunosDiscos Laptra, Argentina
Rating: 70
by Carlos Reyes
While not every band in the world wants to make a statement with their timing, it is quite noticeable whenever a band doesn’t seem to want (or be able) to make songs longer than two minutes. This is the case of Argentina’s 107 Faunos, a band that serves from a generation’s urgency and need for flashy, short-lived experiences, including our encounter with rock music in an era The Strokes have classified as “the modern age.” Creo Que Te Amo is the band’s second album, an appetizing 14-track record that puts the Buenos Aires band on a safe, yet compelling ground.
The album’s title is a great companion of my timing rule theory; a generation’s fear to commitment and overstatement is immediately suggested. The themes and topics of Creo Que Te Amo are those of the adolescent years where uncertainty overshadows positivism, which is why the band probably starts the album with the weirdly profane “Scottie Pippen y Yo.” The album follows with mostly unexpected numbers where the band shows as much eclecticism as many of today’s avant-pop practitioners (Star Slinger, En Ventura, Girls, to name a few). The band has the right amount of instrumental backbone, charismatic vocals and cool aesthetics, but it misses actual melody. “Noche Spooky Tropical” is the album’s most obvious ‘single’, and although great at deconstructing guitars, it submerges melody to the point it becomes aloof.
Where the band does triumph is at processing a post-punk sensibility that takes them outside the lo-fi nugget territory and into more stable ground. Not to say they’ve turn into a standard mature act, “Muchachita” still breathes garage nostalgia, and it’s got plenty of cowbells as well. Sometimes the band is so comfortable that they end up in truly unsuspected places, “La Gloria Secreta” totally sounds like something from the 31 Minutos repertoire. The best tracks in the album come at very end (“Movimiento de las Montanas” & “El Jefe de los Malos”), where they leave the monotone prototypes behind and find strength in group-shouting choruses. It’s the intensity that counts, not the lasting seconds, enough for an "I think I love You" record.