The three certainties in life are taxes, death, and that the new Meridian Brothers album will be a bit different from the last one, but that it will be just as good. »Mi Latinoamérica Sufre« is the first solo album by Columbian Eblis Álvarez—to the uninitiated, yes, this group is essentially a one-man operation—since 2020’s »Cumbia Siglo XXI,« which was followed by collaborative albums with Conjunta Media Luna and Grupo Renacimiento. On it, he draws inspiration from West African highlife music and Congo’s soukous—a predecessor of sorts to the merengue.
Working with these African and/or Afro-Caribbean traditions’ focus on the guitar—here played entirely without distortion—and mixing them with Latin American rhythms such as the ever-present cumbia allows Álavarez to thread some wonderfully weird tunes whose production makes it sound as if they are vintage while the music itself is decidedly innovative: This joyfully anarchistic bricolage approach would at best result in happy accidents in the hands of most others, but Álvarez is unlike any other musician: In addition with his humorous vocal delivery—here’s a man shamelessly mocking himself for 47 minutes straight—he manages to break entirely new ground. In other words: This is another Meridian Brothers album, different from the last one and just as good (if not better).
