Tangos Pendientes

The fourth track on this album is ‘Jacinto Chiclana’, a poem by Jorge Luis Borges. Its music is folksy and Russ’ voice is ominous and fugitive, not unlike Mercedes Sosa in her quieter moments. But the song throws into relief why this Argentinian singer is not really the tanguera she'd like to be. In the liner notes Russ makes her case that though she is from Cordoba, Argentina's second city, and not Buenos Aires, she can still do the business. But, on songs like ‘Tormenta’, ‘Fruta Amarga’ and ‘Rebeldia’, her voice is booming, bereft of emotion and, worst of all, self-important: a common fault of those singers who have, like Russ, at some stage sold their souls to work in a tango show. Russ says she regrets performing tangos ‘for export’ (ie for gringo tourist audiences) and her choice of songs suggests a fondness for the proto-tangos of the 1910s and 20s. But her overacting and emphatic delivery will transport listeners not to Ye Olde Buenos Aries but to a tacky operetta circa 2012. Jorge Luis Borges complained that tango, by the 30s, had become ‘the cuckold's; he was referring to the male singing stars of his time. For all her sincere homages and pseudo-erotic hauteur, Russ sounds like a contemporary, female cornuda.