The Latin Grammy they continue to resist Pablo Alboranbut he continues to do what he does, which is to fill large spaces in his own way, with or without the blessing of academics from an industry with its sights set on the other side of the Atlantic.
His is still a different way, his own, of sneaking into the commercial showcase, Latin but with a very nuanced tropicalism, with introspection and soft southern melisma, as he showed us again this Saturday in a Palau Sant Jordi with all the paper sold (15,100 attendees, according to the promoter ‘The Project’).
The Malaga native’s latest album, ‘The fourth leaf, a title that alludes to an impossible clover (which is inside us, he has said, like a ‘new age’ guru), peppered the session with seven of its eleven songs and a substantial range of accents. There were the mists of ‘Voraces’, the flamenco-rumbero touch of ‘El Traje’ and the sentimental roller coaster of ‘Viaje a Nowhere’ (it’s a pity that the mariachi touch of the album was not heard). And shaking the stands, the pop rush of ‘Ave de paso’, his duet with Ana Mena.
misty poetry
Alborán sometimes moves around a ‘non-place’ (as he once indicated to this newspaper), between Latinidad and balladism. A tremulous space that he takes advantage of, although on a lyrical level he sometimes invites us to speculate about what the clouds smell like with those poetic texts of lost concreteness. There was the (convoluted) soap opera of ‘Saturn’, standing out despite everything in the first block.
But, in acoustic, attached to the nylon string guitar, gave Alborán some of his best records: the distant ‘Solamente tú’ (from the days of the airy white sofa on YouTube in 2010), linked with ‘Perdóname’. From there to a surprise, the bossa nova of ‘Al Paraíso’, a piece unrelated to the tour script, intertwined with the friendly voice of Silvia Pérez Cruz, guest of the night. Theme about “forbidden loves” and sublimations “without asking permission.” Also in the intimate key was a new song, not yet published, ‘Inciso’, which he defended on the keyboard and which alludes to the fleeting nature of gratifications in modern times.
Concert without tricks
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Although it provided some moves with views of the tropics (like ‘4U’ or the other unreleased, ‘If you wanted’, more banal), its work moved between delicate emotional folds, it could be said that it connected with each attendee one by one, without overacting. nor excess of spectacle. Stage without tricks or catwalks and a serene Sant Jordi, attentive to every inflection of the repertoire, consolidating the perception of Alborán as an adult artist, already far removed from the most strident fan phenomenon.
We had to wait until the end to witness a certain general chaos due to the most effervescent numbers, such as ‘Vívela’, ‘Llueve sobre wet’ and ‘Amigos’, examples of a Pablo Alborán who was more physical than poetic, Latin and pop, prone to the hubbub although far from its most genuine and distinguishable profile.