There are too many highlights in Centavrvs’ debut LP to exhaustively name, but I’ll try anyway. Sombras de Oro, the D.F. group’s first full length after a string of promising EPs, does just what Centavrvs has promised in previous releases; the album mixes national and international influences—corrido, cumbia, rock, pop, trop, and even trip-hop—to capture a complicated, hectic oneness. It’s a marriage of sounds that, like many marriages, creates friction while building up to something hopeful.
Sombras de Oro features its already-released title track–produced by Toy Selectah–one of those many highlights that, as we mentioned a few months back, is a melodramatic dance track. The equally melodramatic Denise Gutiérrez duet “Por Eso,” one of our favorite songs and videos from 2013, makes a cameo in the middle of the album, raising the album’s emotional stakes significantly. Opener “La Noche y un Huracán” promises big choruses, electro flurries, Afro-influenced guitars, and, how you say, lots of feels; although the album seems more concerned with remix and dance floor friendliness during its second, less transfixing half.
With this release Centavrvs inspires me to draw comparisons to Chile’s Ases Falsos. Both groups feature quite the crooners; both understand how to maintain a balance between instrumental and lyrical grandness; and both bands sound about as meticulous and tight as any other band out there, probably more so. But it’s these bands’ earnestness, assertiveness, and risk that make them kindred spirits in my book.
Centavrvs’ debut Sombras de Oro is out today via Casete.