Consumer Guide Album

Rubén Blades y Seis del Solar: Agua de Luna [Elektra, 1987]
Establishing his progressive credentials and his rock credentials simultaneously, Blades commits two progressive rock errors, relying on synthesizers for texture and literature for aesthetic complexity. It's a measure of his gift and his freedom from pretension that between his supple voice and even suppler groove he induces you to listen to the damn synths--and that the words sound (and translate) like they make sense until you bear down line by line. As I bet Garcia Márquez knows, this kind of compression isn't realistic or magical, much less both. It's an impressionistic code. B