After the two lengthy intervals that preceded
Zoé's last two albums, the Mexican band was on track for the usual cycle of touring and recording when the pandemic threw a spanner in the works. Their seventh studio album,
Sonidos de Karmática Resonancia, was meant to be completed in mid-2020, a mere two years after the Grammy-winning
Aztlán (2018), but the band had to stop recording in March and could only physically reconvene in September to finish the proceedings in a couple of weeks. Even if its track list doesn't exactly correlate with the actual recording chronology,
SKR also has the distinct feel of being an album of two halves. The first half is frontloaded with flawless
Zoé singles, heavily indebted to indie pop of the late '80s and early '90s, and brimming with driving synthesizer riffs and textures, and eminent melodies all infused with the trademark romantic longing of
León Larregui's voice and lyrics. "Velur" neatly compresses this formula into its first minute-and-a-half: the intro bears more than a passing resemblance to
the Cure's "In Between Days," and as soon as
Larregui starts to sing it is impossible not to conjure the ghost of
Gustavo Cerati, so similar are his timbre, vocal mannerisms, and even his lexicon, to the late
Soda Stereo frontman. The second half of
SKR is a bit more uneven. As opposed to the unified front end presented by the initial salvo, the rest of the album offers a series of nods to different strands of
Zoé's sonic legacy, as if the band want to reassure their fans (or perhaps themselves) that they have not turned into a singles-only machine. Besides being one of the few tracks built upon predominant acoustic guitars, "Canción de Cuna para Marte" fulfills the mandatory cosmic song spot, "Tepoztlán" is a close cousin to the Aztec world of "Aztlán," "Ese Cuadro no Me Pinta" references the space rock of
Pink Floyd augmented with tribal drumming, and "Bestiario" wraps things up with some social commentary. To their credit, the band never sound like they're on autopilot: so much attention is paid to the fine details in the songwriting and the production, not to mention the vibrancy in the execution. In short,
SKR is a standard late-period
Zoé album with the extra bonus of adding a slew of sure-fire hits ("SKR," "Fiebre," "Karmadame," and "Velur") to the band's already impressive set list. ~ Mariano Prunes