Estar Ahí

With or without his band La Chicana, Acho Estol’s music always has something of a tea-concert quality. An airy lightness informs the arrangements, with a signature of folksy fiddles, choppy acoustic guitar and vocals that are playful, sometimes picaresque. On Estar Ahí, his sixth solo album, his voice – which has a fragile, floating quality – alternates with performances by guests. Mamba Malí plays up the melodrama. Cucuza Castiello’s vocals are impassioned, with a formidable range.

Natalia Bazan’s musical-theatre manner is closer in style to Dolores Solá, Estol’s partner and long-time collaborator. If a tango imprint overlays the project it’s in spirit as much as in any rhythmic or melodic rubric. His work veers – and this is the right word – between folkloric intimacy, tanguero melodrama and a carnivalesque capering tinged with something darker. The mood changes are subtle, swaying rather than swinging, from track to track, with a multi-instrumental palette of musical tones to match; Estol is an assured player of guitar, piano, double-bass and keyboards, as well as more eccentric tools like ngoni, balafon and Stylophone. The album title means ‘Being There’. The cover photograph shows Estol, diminutive and shadowed beneath an immense rubber fig tree, characteristic of Buenos Aires’ grander plazas but not native. He stands within the roots, but the roots are not his. He’s the kind of artist that enjoys such ironies. Being here, post-pandemic, is a challenge to all. This is a soundtrack for a people’s peña – part-fiesta, part-noir movie, part-bad trip, part dreamscape.