Adios Amores - El Camino Adios Amores

Birds of prey, new faces, black smoke, snakes and a road. It seems, of course, that we are witnessing the opening sequence of a spaghetti western filmed in Almería. We could wait for the silent passage of some rolling thistles and, at sunset, the entrance on stage of two people in the foreground, dressed in their best clothes: scarf blowing in the wind, belt with a large golden buckle, leather boots. Just like in those films where the Wild West and the best fashion of the early 70s came together in pursuit of a superior fiction, beyond historical rigours.

But this time it is something more real – and even better than any Leone film transcript – since we are finally talking about the debut album of Adiós Amores. The Andalusians publish El Camino, the long-awaited full-length that, after four previews presented throughout 2023 – Soleada, Humo negro, La culpa and Caras Nuevas – reaches our hands. The melodic, brilliant duo, Ana and Iman deliver their weird, synchronised magic in style. If it were the set of a variety show on old single-channel television, they move from one stage to another with a lightness, urgency and timeless electricity.

But there are levels and levels, because, first, they do it within their own universe, enchanting and mysterious, in which sumptuous, folkloric, cinematic and desert passages fit; but this movement is also read from an industrial perspective, since El Camino crosses from side to side the heart of the Spanish-speaking pop scene and its borders — and certainly not without dynamiting many of its repetitive and commercial inertias, but also making its own that old-fashioned pop that we will always come back to.

Ten titles complete this album whose exquisite geographical coordinates are located between the white towns of Andalusia, the sound of the old European metropolises, the Mediterranean breeze and the arid, red and border rumor that separates Mexico from the United States. It is clear that El Camino leads to multiple places and that all of them are capable of revealing a common refuge for elegance, adventure and pop mannerism.

There it is – spooky, charmed, so good.

SP / Google Translates