Vetusta Morla - Un Día en el Mundo (2008)

After nine years of admirable efforts to get a leg up in the local scene (demos, performing live, etc), Vetusta Morla finally got their deserved reward with their release Un Día en el Mundo. Produced by their self-created label Pequeño Salto Mortal ("Little Somersault"), this work contains a careful sound which is every bit as good as any international production. Starting with a remarkable instrumental harmony, this debut also shows the band's exceptional talents as musicians. Vetusta Morla still stays away from a writing level comparable to, for example, the disbanded Los Piratas' and, musically, despite the impeccable sound and mature rhythm structures, the album seems to remain in nowhere land: most of the songs are never quite hooky, nor do they have a rock kick, leaving them devoid of not necessarily a personal sound, but a bit of personality. Pucho's voice, technically irreproachable, constantly sounds in falsetto, fitting in more with a different music style than their own. "La Cuadratura del Círculo" and "Al Respirar" are two great exceptions -- they're great, hooky rock and pop songs, respectively -- and "Año Nuevo" and "Copenhague" are other good songs. Un Día en el Mundo is a worthy and promising debut album of rock/pop en español in the line of Radiohead (listen to the similarity between "Un Día en el Mundo" and Radiohead's "My Iron Lung") but it oozes the same smell as many other art works: when the artist intends to convey a foreign inner spirit, a shred of artificiality and a lack of guts appear. El Quijote didn't act like Shakespeare's Romeo; neither should Vetusta Morla's music.