Author: Chris Moss
View album and artist detailsArtist/band: |
Marcela Arroyo |
Label: |
Double Moon |
Magazine Review Date: |
June/2022 |
This Swiss-based Argentinian singer-songwriter takes some of the moody melodrama of tango and a clod of the earthiness of her mother country’s folklore, and injects into this fairly orthodox fusion the scat and soul-searching of jazz vocals. The product is less than its parts, though, and this ten-song series on De Par en Par, her fifth album, too often drifts towards bland sentimentality.
Titles like ‘Cocina de Mi Infancia’ (The Kitchen/Food of My Childhood) and ‘Abrazo’ (Hug/Embrace) hint at as much. Arroyo’s blessed with a powerful voice, but is given to showing it off, sacrificing intimacy in the process. ‘Barrio’ and ‘Candombe Mio’, driven respectively by choppy guitar-strumming and plinky piano and percussion, are the more energetic of the tracks, but the candombe element of the latter is reduced to a middle eight and lacks any of the rootsy vitality of the Afro-Latin form. A so-so expat excursion, somehow more Swiss than South American.
Start your journey and discover the very best music from around the world.
Subscribe