Many people are so focused on the lyrics of a song that the brilliance of what is going on musically gets lost in the listener’s fixation with its sing-along-ability. But what if the language of the song is not, as is the case for me here, your first language? What if the exact meaning of the lyrics remains a mystery? Well, you have to find other, perhaps better, ways of connecting with and understanding the music.
Not only is Infierno de Dante, the latest album from Costa Rica’s Quizá Mañana a Spanish language affair, but its lyrics are also often so spaciously arranged that you have no choice but to focus on the music that drives it.
This makes for a great experience because without the direct communication of the lyrics (unless you speak Spanish, of course, and even then, the vocals are often a wash of half-buried, drifting sonics), you have no choice but to listen to what the music itself, its sonics and structures, tones and textures, has to say.
And the music speaks volumes. Eight songs that blend 60’s infused psychedelic adventure with gnarly garage rock guitars and ambient delicacy with shoegaze walls of sound, like Santana, early Pink Floyd and My Bloody Valentine all fighting over creative control of the same song, and I mean that in a really positive way.
From the lysergic trip of the appropriately named “Benadryl” to the Dionysian bliss of “Inseguridad” and from the almost Brit-pop aligned groove of “Valle De Sol” to the anthemic blues of the final song, “Alajuela Blues,” this is a marvelous, mercurial and genuinely magical album. Perhaps that magic and sense of reward are heightened for non-Spanish speakers, such as myself because you have to take alternative and less obvious routes to the music’s heart.
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