¿Dónde Estás María?

When describing the music of Meridian Brothers, the Brazilian tropicália legend Tom Zé is a name that crops up a lot. They are certainly kindred spirits, making eccentric yet melodic music full of unexpected sonic detours, and always drawing on some concept for each new album. However, it's only been in the past few years, due to a number of tours in Brazil, that Meridian Brothers' main man Éblis Álvarez has been able to thoroughly research Zé, as well as other tropicália and 70s pop artists from the country. In that music he found a lot of strong percussion and great grooves, but also a melancholy in the vocals, a quality generally absent from Colombian music, and something that he wanted to try. This is what you hear on ¿Dónde Estás María?: Álvarez offers up some of his most plaintive vocals, with added cello offering a stern dose of gravitas, as in the delicate, eerie ‘Canto Me Levantó'. Álvarez, however, is still a composer full of playfulness and wit and tracks like ‘Entra el Ritmo Antillano’, with its boogaloo bass line, demonstrate a fine balance between pathos and the kind of partying associated with the classic Colombian music he still takes great inspiration from.