Piel

Piel is a brand new band that has emerged on the Uruguayan indie label La Órbita Irresistible. Their first, eponymous album is a well-polished pop-rock not far away from Vampire Weekend and other bands that rose at the end of the last decade.

Piel’s songs are a great guitar work full of nice, clean fills. OK, you can ask what’s new about this band? Probably nothing, but in my humble opinion music is not anymore about making something new. We could say that most of the best arrangements in music are already done. Just do the math. From Bach to the Beatles, the best combinations have been already used.

“Well, but the combinations of notes are close to infinite,” you could say. And you would be right. But maybe we have to ask ourselves if those other combinations are really worth it. This is my point: When you play a C chord it’s not just an arbitrary sound. The combination of C, E, G, C comes from nature.

So instead of searching for something new, maybe the true richness of contemporary music is to embrace this idea and try to add your personal touch to what’s already there. We’re not gonna create something really, really, big – hopefully we can, but I’m not very optimistic. At least not in this decade. But we can put our grain of sand to the construction that humanity has been building for centuries. The foundations are already here, let’s focus on details.

Piel’s album seems to suggest that Gastón and Gonzalo Vivas, who make up the band, know about all of the above. We can recognize a wide variety of influences in their music, but always with a very personal touch. This is not something to despise, considering that this is the debut album of the band. And sometimes it takes several albums to find and embrace that individuality, which you can call a “sound” if you want.

You can stream “Piel” in its entirety here.

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Piel on Bandcamp, Facebook.

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