While pop hits are manufactured in laboratories calculating hooks and ‘gags’, Quique González sinks roots in the more narrative song, slow preparation, enveloping you with its verb in the first person. A career like before, his, which is not at odds with popular taste, as was seen this Thursday at the Palau (Guitar BCN), where he came to share the middle-aged songbook of ‘Sur en el valle’.
The title refers to wind that sometimes whips the Cantabrian Pasiegos Valleys, where the musician from Madrid lives and which, according to what he says, brings a certain mood change. Influence tending towards an emotional withdrawal, in tune with the mid-tempo and the friction of acoustic guitars and double bass with the electric register.
The wake of The Band
González moves away from the search for the chorus to promote stories (not always decipherable) that convey a state of mind. There was a certain linearity there, compensated by the lively expression of the band: that game with two keyboards, Raúl Bernal’s Hammond (also an accomplice of José Ignacio Lapido and 091) and César Pop’s piano and accordion, tandem reminiscent of The Band.
The soft ‘funky’ dalliance of ‘Te tiras a muerte’ and the internal tension of ‘May I move’ brought critical sequences to a program that sought a certain catharsis in the repechage of ‘Kamikazes in love’, ‘Dallas-Memphis’ or ‘Crossed Lives’ (and which included a version of ‘Considendo’, by the ill-fated Raphael Berrio). Echoes of a González closer to the rock canon that contrasted with his present as a murky narrator, capable despite everything of sealing deep ties with an audience that grows with him.
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