Federico Aubele reviewed
Federico Aubele
Panamericana
(Eighteenth Street Lounge)
Federico Aubele and Che Guevara seem unlikely bedfellows. Aubele surely had the Argentine revolutionary’s Motorcycle Diaries in mind when he envisioned this album traversing the Americas, but the two trips (Guevara’s actual, Aubele’s figurative) couldn’t be more different.
Appearing: November 10th at Schubas in Chicago.
Guevara, the world knows, became a militant Marxist and aided uprisings in Cuba and the Congo, while Aubele remains a pop songwriter. Panamericana is more like a diary recounted over vague international tones. Singing of loneliness (“Solo la lluvia por compañía”) and being reminded of home (“El recuerdo de tu canción”), it’s almost as if he didn’t want to bore us with geography and overcompensated by painting in broad strokes. The music is more often inoffensive than exceptional (the sashaying “María José” and the dub-inflected “Su Melodía” are the only essential listens), and ultimately makes the sum of the New World less exotic than its parts.
— Steve Forstneger
