Chilean singer and songwriter
Mon Laferte is no stranger to change. She has embraced it in so many areas of her life and work that it seems an aesthetic principle. Early on, she recorded and performed as Monserrat Bustamente, a straight-up Latin pop singer. In 2007, she immigrated to Mexico and started playing rock. After being diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2009 and beating it, she changed her name to
Mon Laferte, and began recording in an indie rock style that netted her a Latin Grammy for 2015's
Volume 1. 2017's hit
La Trenza showcased her embrace of Latin American song traditions in a modern recontextualization. 2019's
Norma, an intensely personal album, focused on heartbreak through different dance rhythms with wildly contrasting instrumentation and arrangements including 1940s big band mambo, rockist psychedelic cumbia, and '70s boleros and salsa.
Seis, her sixth album, is rooted in Mexican folk traditions. After the onset of the pandemic,
Laferte moved to Tepoztlán. She saw a documentary on the life of iconic ranchera singer
Chavela Vargas, who spent her final years in the bucolic town.
Vargas' music spurred
Laferte to explore a wide range of Mexican styles in her writing. These 14 songs run the gamut from rancheras and mariachis to boleros, bandas, and corridos tumbados.
Laferte bookends the set with contrasting versions of her harrowing commentary on gender violence titled "Se Me Va A Quemar El Corazón." On the first, her grainy, angry, yet vulnerable vocal is accompanied only by guitar and bajo sexto. She revisits her "La Mujer" in a duo with one of her earliest and greatest inspirations, Mexican pop/rock icon
Gloria Trevi.
Laferte hasn't sung it in years; she came to consider its lyrics too dysfunctional. Here she not only rewrote them and revamped the music, it is now a feminist manifesto adorned in a snaky bolero, saturated in reverbed guitars and brass. The women's contrasting voices are resplendent in immediacy, passion, and authority. "Esta Morra No Se Vende" is a bouncing corrido, while "Aunque Te Mueras Por Volver" weds theatrical bolero to classy pop with a rock band and an orchestral string section. The single "Que Se Sepa Nuestro Amor" is sung as an a unabashedly romantic ranchera with the legendary
Alejandro Fernandez; the duo are accompanied by the all-female Mujeres del Viento Florido. The meld of
Laferte's and
Fernandez's voices delivers it with the conviction of a treasured standard. While "Se Ma Vida" is a slow-burning corrido, the closing version of "Se Me Va A Quemar El Corazón" is offered in a heartbreaking collaboration with
La Arrolladora Banda El Limon fronted by singer Esaúl García.
Seis stands with
Norma as a milestone in
Laferte's career. Each track is delivered with the consistency, care, honesty, and obsessive attention to detail that
Laferte's poetic lyrics and melodies require. The humble presentation here contrasts with her songwriting ambition in what amounts to a truly visionary work of popular art. ~ Thom Jurek