Betacam’s second full-length album seems wounded, and sounds that way too. Opposite the brimming organic romanticism of “Mítico”, “La Noche Interior” deploys a certain coldness to take distance.

It is clear in ‘Tan sólo algo de ayuda’, where he sings “es sólo una mala racha, mañana se me pasas, un día un poco tonto lo tenemos todos” but without being able to elude, between effluvia of Destroyer’s “Kaputt”, the doubts of if we are failing, of who we are. Is he Betacam or Javier Carrasco, “un músico o tan solo un mediocre editor”?

We answer him as Tulsa does in a spectacular appearance: we will never know the answer completely, nobody does, but we always want to spend the day among Betacam’s records and songs. We wanted to be eternally in “Mythic”, and now we still like to be with you, Betacam; we love it because ‘Nos gusta hablar de amor’ activates us the intimate synthpop epic, always so difficult to execute.

We like your records because there are jitazos for radios that no longer exist (‘Yo nací para quererte’), because sometimes you dress like the Jarvis Cocker of Torrelavega (and because ‘Nada volverá a seguir a seguir a igual’ is the ‘Something Changed’ of while it’s happening), because at the same time there is some delicate and incendiary light in a lot of your songs (‘XX’ is a peak).

‘Un esclavo, un siervo’, cocked by a beat that could be ‘Paper Planes’, makes the battleground clear: “you know I’d do anything for you / even go shopping on a Friday in Madrid”. In this supposedly anodyne and anti-epic territory of everyday life is where the songs of this year’s best album become strong, huge.

‘Cosas Bonitas’ (male friendship, the “let’s see if we see each other” when we really want to) and the darky, spectacular ‘El capitalismo ha hecho llorar a Merche’ have underpinned an amazing half hour of songs that maybe before coming out were from Betacam, but from now on will be ours forever. (P. Roberto Jiménez, Hipersónica)

Stream “La Noche Interior” LP on Spotify.