Gloria Trevi, a Mexican pop/rock star too often defined by her personal travails rather than her musical talents, goes a long way toward reinventing herself stylistically with
Una Rosa Blu and putting the tabloid fodder of her past behind her. In some ways the album is a continuation of her comeback album,
Cómo Nace el Universo (2004), as well as its follow-up,
La Trayectoria (2006), an in-concert career overview that included a handful of new studio recordings, most notably "Todos Me Miran," her biggest hit single in over a decade. Like
Cómo Nace el Universo and
La Trayectoria,
Una Rosa Blu finds
Trevi collaborating once again with producer
Armando Ávila, who lends her more of the hitmaking expertise he brought to
La Quinta Estación and
RBD in recent years. Several songs on the album, beginning with the album-opening lead single, "Psicofonia," indeed sound stylistically reminiscent of
La Quinta Estación. The second and third songs on the album, "Pruebamelo" and "Lo Que una Chica por Amor Es Capaz," carry on in a similar style. This opening run of songs is very good, but
Una Rosa Blu begins to take curious turns away from contemporary Latin pop/rock thereafter. Sequenced fourth, the title track, a reinterpretation of Italian vocalist
Michele Zarrillo's "Una Rosa Blu," is a dramatic ballad produced by
Bob Benozzo (his only contribution to the album) that opens rather surprisingly with saxophone, plus acoustic guitar and piano -- very much in contrast to the punchy pop/rock of the previous three songs. Subsequent songs on
Una Rosa Blu take curious turns of their own: for instance, "Immaculada" is a power ballad driven by hard rock guitar riffs, "Doña Pudor" is a slamming dance track powered by pulsing beats as well as more hard rock guitar, and "La Vida Se Va" is a
Sergio George production typical of his New York salsa-pop style. The other of the two
George productions, the likewise atypical "Lo Que Te Toca," a standout album-closing collaboration with merengue superstar
Olga Tañón, is considerably more notable. Another highlight sequenced toward the close of the album is "Cinco Minutos"; penned by
Erika Ender, it's the album's most infectious song and leads perfectly into the lively
Tañón team-up. A series of dance remixes is then tacked on as bonus material (the quantity of bonus material varying from one edition of the album to another), and while these remixes are more or less superfluous, they're tastefully done, the "Psicofonia" remix in particular, and further add to the sense that
La Atrevida is reinventing herself stylistically on
Una Rosa Blu, an album that should refocus the spotlight on
Trevi the artist rather than
Trevi the tabloid mainstay. ~ Jason Birchmeier