Free and legal MP3: Remate (breezy international indie pop)

“Gigante” – Remate

Ha, so look—the British Sea Power folks have finally moved beyond their predilection for one-name names and they are joined this week on Fingertips by two musicians employing one-name names. Everything connects; you just need the right cords. (Not to mention chords.)

In any case, there’s something ineffably marvelous about this Spanish-language bit of international indie pop. On top of its lazy, head-bopping beat, we get a fuzzy guitar, a chipper cello (courtesy of Julia Kent, of Antony & the Johnsons), chimey percussion, hand claps, and, among other things, a ukulele played by Stephin Merritt. (Merritt was brought into the project by producer LD Beghtol, who had collaborated on the Magnetic Field’s magnum opus, 69 Love Songs.) I like how the song manages to be at once kitchen-sinky and tightly disciplined, and I like most of all Remate’s breezy-breathy-earthy tenor, and how he kind of calls the meeting to order with his laid-back phrasing and the culminating repeated question: “¿Donde está?” Maybe “Where is she?,” maybe “Where is it?” but in any case, “¿Donde están?”—where are they? But whoever or whatever he’s looking for, he sounds actually less concerned than maybe bemused, an affect amplified when the echoing synth line we first heard after the repeated question becomes an almost lighthearted chorus of “la-la-las” towards the end of the song (2:21).

Remate is a Madrid-based musician whose upcoming album, recorded in NYC, features songs that are each about a different adult-movie actress who uses the last name “Luv”—“14 songs of misspelled love or something like William Shakespeare on the porno industry,” in Remate’s words. The album is called Superluv: Por Lo Que Tiene de Romantico and will be out on Everlasting Records in Spain in January; a US release slated for the spring.