Niños Azules, CLDSCP Big Making Records, Argentina
Rating: 66
By Carlos Reyes
Music theorists of the purist persuasion will tell you there’s no such a thing as “too catchy," or at least they wouldn’t see it as a flaw. Truth is, when an album’s structure puts all of its sonic and lyrical literacy into a “catchy tune," you risk stepping in the drowning waters of the spasmodic, and that’s the furthest you can possibly get from musical transcendence.
Up-and-coming Argentinean duo CLDSCP swims in this dangerous field of accidental easiness on their latest album Niños Azules, a record full of color that fights its own effortless spirit in hopes of achieving something broader than the average. CLDSCP’s precocious chest of instrumental resources includes a charango, handclaps, a beatbox, and weeping vocal harmonies. While charming and often kitschy, Leopoldo de Sarro and Andres Andinach take things even further as they seem to work with the melancholic concept of a playground. Opening track “Puedo” is shamelessly appealing, yet too sugary to function (those first rhymes are as generic as those odorless songs by Noah and the Whale). Sometimes the songs are so stripped down to harmonics that one is tempted to shoegaze; it’s fascinating to see what a few spoons of honey can do.
Fortunately, the album gets some of its essential aspirations right, often finding their gist in the background loops and adventurous folksy-electro fills like they do in the album's best track, “Encanto.” Niños Azules is far more interesting in its lyrics, dropping one remarkable line after another. The winning line has to be “me siento mas lindo.” Ultimately, the success of this record will depend on your level of progressiveness and your appreciation of semi-masqueraded victories. Unlike their fellow dreamy lo-fiers (El Medio, Kanaku y El Tigre, Coiffeur), CLDSCP have not found a channel for melodic succession, but I’m sure they’ll get there soon enough.