Tristeza
Indie Rock / Instrumental
"In my slowly advancing years, only a few groups can truly touch part of me that I keep fairly well hidden. Music at its best and by the very nature of its creation, has the ability above all the other arts to touch us deeply at our roots, sometimes (and this is what makes it so powerful) so surprisingly and when we are least expecting it. My emotional response to music of overwhelming beauty and sadness is simply to cry. At a gig, in the car, walking down the street, the feelings can often be so staggering as to render me relatively useless.
Tristeza have done this to me more times than I care to mention.
With their new and third studio album ‘A Colores' (In Colors), I am again happy to say the lump in my throat is back. With the best instrumental bands, the absence of words and vocal melodies is actually the strength not the weakness. Where so much modern pop rock music relies on an anodyne formulaic and generally soul-less musical backdrop for equally unedifying vocal performances, artists like Tristeza are free to express more profound feelings that can be wrung from their guitars, keyboards and yes, even the drums. Drummers like Jimmy Lehner are composers not drummers. They don't just play the beat.
When co-founder member Jimmy Lavalle left in 2003 to pursue his Album Leaf project, many of us assumed the band would split, yet we underestimated the bond between Christopher Sprague, Jimmy Lehner and Luis Hermosillo and their allegiance for Tristeza. . With the introduction of fresh spirit and energy from recent additions Alison Ables and Sean Ogilvie, the band began writing new songs in Mexico and San Diego and things began to take shape.The ‘2005 Tour CD' for sale at their live shows gave us some fantastic dubbed up experimental gems to keep our appetites whetted till the studio album was ready. Heading out to Key Club Recording in Benton Harbor, Michigan at the beginning of 2005 they started the sessions that would produce A Colores. With further sessions and mixes done at Rancho Bernardo the album is now complete.
The album will delight both diehard Tristeza fans and the uninitiated alike. Where the band have plainly influenced all kinds of other artists, the new music on A Colores does not rest on laurels. With layers and textures more akin to Boards of Canada and Amon Tobin, tracks like ‘Abrazo Distante' and the atmospheric and hypnotic ‘Cuchillos de Hielo', the album shows that Tristeza are now fulfilling all the hopes we have always had for them. Instead of Lavalle's absence creating a vacuum, Christopher Sprague and Alison Ables' guitar playing is the true secret of this albums success. Melodic and inventive, emotive and inspirational, the guitars sing so eloquently throughout it is nothing less than revelatory.
The new record begins with ‘Bromas', which is a brilliant opening track. Underpinned by a subtle and unexpected drum pattern, the foreplay between guitars and keyboards throughout is quite magical. New ground is reached with ‘Balabaristas' which begins with an arpeggiated keyboard melody that Royksopp would be proud of and expands gradually into a mesmerising and graceful peak. ‘La Tierra Sutil' is classic Tristeza, dark and cascading guitar lines overlapping with warped electronica. There is great hope and optimism present here, a sanguine feeling that permeates through the whole album.
‘Halo Heads' with exquisite playing throughout, has one of the great bass lines and Luis Hermosillo is simply one of the most underrated bass players in music today. Delicate and super-tasteful one minute, and intense and pulsating the next, this man truly LOVES his bass. You can tell in every touch of his fingers.
There is variety too, in tempos and mood, ‘Aereoaviones' with a elusive piano refrain is at one turn restrained and melancholic, before lifting and shifting the clouds to reveal a beautiful blue sky beyond.
So this is a triumphant return by Tristeza. An album that is as magnificent from first to last, truly a wonderful collection of music from people that clearly HAVE to make music together. We are blessed that they do and humbled by the experience."
-Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins)
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