(Nova Cançó, Prog Folk, Symphonic, Art Pop) Lluis Llach - Maremar (1985) - 2007, APE (image+.cue), lossless

Lluís Llach is a prolific author, as there world! Almost every year we served at the table, hot as a freshly baked llonguet, a new record. This frequency obviously can have a negative impact on the quality of results, making excellent themes alternate with others not developed enough and that more than the smell of turkey stuffing. However, the latest album from singer Virgin seems an exception: since when I sing sad (1974) - in my opinion, their most accomplished album overall - we offered a job as coherent without notable ups and downs and while with very different musical atmospheres.

Although Marema not include any long composition - the type of Ithaca, Chimes at or dead now - the themes of the first side of the disk drive are evident. The theme is the internalization of the death of a loved one, the longing that involves the disappearance and the fact of acceptance on behalf of the cyclic laws.

The first song is the title of the album. Musically, the sound connects with "Mediterranean" which appears in the work of Lluis Llach arriving from Greece and ship it fully consolidates My friend the sea. But why Marema? Why is the union of these two words to make this kind of neologism Llach? We could talk, perhaps, the sea as a universal mother. Is the amniotic fluid of a fetus that became mankind.

Lluís Llach, places us in the decorated entrance, before going on to tell us about your other mother - the "particular" - because he knows that, ultimately, both end up identifying a level almost pantheistic.

The second issue - the Song of longing - a beautiful composition inspired melodic motifs of the Elche Mystery Play, which features the vocal collaboration of Maria del Mar Bonet - beautifully natural - and Marina Rossell - plethoric, but a little too affected for my taste. Then the song Nin non extends this dialogue with the mother disappeared as a lullaby - a musically waltzes with many points of contact with fragments of Virgin 50. They say sleep is the brother of death, right? Personally, I find this topic in an echo of the last songs he recorded Brel: Jojo. I think especially in this excerpt: "... never Heureux of savoir / that je viens déjà you.

"A white cloud, the last piece of the face, for me the key, the centerpiece of the album. The longing and sorrow give way to hope - this white cloud already mentioned the issue Marema -: The world is a circle filled circles, a series of cycles and the perfect way implies acceptance of a possible return . A superb melody illustrates this philosophy somewhat rooted in the vitality of Salvat Papasseit ("... because we need to die to be reborn").

Four themes complete the album. A power station than the rest of the instrumentation and rhythmic element "modern". I will never know it takes a theme used in Prince of Beirut: the acceptance of the horror and crime as facts "normal" means the total dehumanization. Only for you is a melodic gem that runs the risk of going unnoticed. In the field theme, love is treated as a set of necessary paradoxes and apparent contradictions. The album ends with not one issue of the Chimes in resonance with coral death that is, implicitly, the integration into NATO. Solemn, somewhat bombastic. But effective, and this is about.

Lluís Llach is still an excellent melodista and surround yourself know the right arrangers - Manel Camp and Charles Self - to achieve the most appropriate musical climates. The texts taken apart from its "orality" does not seem as lame as usual, but I still could not quite polished to make them lose the spontaneity.

The fact is that Maremar is a good album that shows a Llach as far as the shock that I represent with a smile, revolt.
-Serra d'Or (1985)-