Lo Que el Viento Me Dejó

Reseña de álbum

Javier Labandón, the Seville-born charmer who is El Arrebato, obviously put plenty of effort into mixing pop/rock and flamenco on his seventh record, but Lo Que el Viento Me Dejo is nevertheless nothing above a fun pop album — which may be credited to either fence-sitting or Labandón's general readiness to dwell firmly within the confines of both genres without challenging them. The blend in question is done on a song-by-song basis — some tunes come complete with that rousing acoustic guitar work, hasty handclapped rhythms, and the trademark wavering, emotion-drenched voice, and elsewhere the spirits of Enrique Iglesias and Zucchero loom tall: songs such as "Durmiendo en Tu Ombligo" are classic Euro-rock ballads with a larger-than-life atmosphere and strings backing up the guitars. The record also offers some stabs at uptempo rock, but even those tunes have a problem with excessive restraint — understandable, perhaps, since Lo Que el Viento Me Dejo is pop music first and foremost, but still meaning that the styles employed here are not milked for all they're worth. The flamenco vibe is nowhere near as reckless and skirt-whirling as it can be, and the rock-oriented pieces always shy away from really blasting it the good-old power pop way, turning down the amps for choruses — a felony in a post-Gin Blossoms world. But even more importantly, the songs aren't terribly memorable — surely nothing of the size of Madonna's "La Isla Bonita," still the blueprint Spanish pop song. Arrebato makes up for it with Mediterranean sentimentality the best he can, but while it clicks together perfectly on the ballads, other songs could use some more envelope-pushing to cross into a heavier weight class.