Elegancia Tropical

Colombia's Bomba Estéreo surprised everyone with the lead single from their second album. Gone was the pounding electro-carnival thrum of their debut: ‘El Alma y el Cuerpo’ was a funky serenade to life on the Caribbean coast, a lazy, sun-drenched dose of tropical grooves that was undoubtedly the best thing they'd recorded to date. That song is the third of an opening quartet of tracks on Elegancia Tropical that continue in this vein, with ‘Bailar Conmigo’ being another highlight; this time using electronic beats to create a woozy digital cumbia sound. If the album had carried on like this it could have been one of the releases of the year, but instead a more urban sound takes over, with a clear shift from the beach to the nightclub. This begins with the jarring ‘Pure Love, a track which seems to think that 90s Eurodance was a genre worth reviving. Collaborations with Angola's Buraka Som Sistema and Brazil's BNegão focus on heavy, hyperactive beats and see the band drift even further away from their original identity, which was always at its best when mixing Liliana Saumet's passionate vocals, Julián Salazar's searing guitar riffs and Simón Mejía's meticulous electronic textures. Thankfully these qualities return for the incendiary ‘Pa’ Respirar’, but it's too little too late. Experimentation is a dangerous thing and here Bomba Estéreo show both its strengths and weaknesses, resulting in an album that is never dull, but will leave you as infuriated as you will be satisfied.