Since releasing Desechable, her 2011 debut album, Chilean singer/songwriter
Mon Laferte has created an ever-evolving pattern across popular music. She has traversed the worlds of pop, Rock en Español, indie rock, cumbia, ranchera, mambo, salsa, psych, and bolero.
1940 Carmen follows her Latin Grammy-nominated
Seis by a mere five months. Written and recorded in Los Angeles from March to July 2021, the ten-song set is titled after the address of the Airbnb where she was staying while she wrote and cut the album, half of it in English.
Laferte plays all of the music here along with her band's musical director Sebastian Aracena. The songs seemingly journal her four-month stay in L.A. during which time her goal was to become pregnant.
The jaunty first single "Algo Es Mejor" weaves together electric and acoustic guitars, a looped snare, and layered backing vocals with sunny optimism. Its hooks are infectious, while its chorus melody recalls a phrase from
Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs." "Placer Hollywood" offers jangly, twanging electric guitars in 3/4 time and sounds like a lost girl group anthem from the early '60s. With lyrics sung in Spanish, French, and English, she channels glam king
T. Rex in a swelling guitar and vocal chorus rave-up. "Good Boy," also delivered in waltz time, delivers gloriously reverbed acoustic guitars, soulful harmonica, and layered electric guitars over organic percussion and filtered ambience. It's a love song of tenderness, joy, and fortitude. "Supermercado"'s electric guitars underscore a voice in full pout while shuffling through a sultry yacht rock melody. "Beautiful Sadness" returns to the girl group approach; chord changes are plucked with whammy-bar leads and majestic snares and kick drums under
Laferte's vocals, which deliver poignant personal revelations about commitment and insecurity. "Química Mayor" employs a similar vibe, but its swirling keyboards and pronounced percussion frame one of her most affecting vocal performances. "A Crying Diamond" is pure drama. Its spaghetti western guitars are drenched in reverb as its narrative harrowingly details the predatory relationship between a 40-year-old man and a teenage girl.
Laferte's most poignant lyric reflects her disgust at his self-assurance: "He knows God understands him/because God is also a man...." Closer "Zombie" is driven by wah-wah guitars and a calliope-sounding Farfisa organ. The instruments swell to meet
Laferte's voice as she digs into its emotional lyric while a killer fuzz guitar break underscores the power in her narrative. While
1940 Carmen is mostly uptempo and optimistic, it nonetheless reflects
Laferte's particular gifts as a songwriter capable of juxtaposing conflicting, even contradictory emotions and psychological states as well as imbuing physical landscapes and personal interactions -- no matter how brief and/or casual -- with profound implications. Though a 180-degree turn from the Mexican regional music employed on
Seis,
1940 Carmen is every bit its equal in creativity, emotional depth, and execution. ~ Thom Jurek