Melingo at the Purcell Room, SE1 Clive Davis At first it looked as if the evening, part of La Linea festival, might be an anticlimax. Daniel Melingo’s new album, Linyera, is such a deliciously multilayered confection that for a while it seemed as if some of the subtleties would be lost on the Purcell Room stage. With just four musicians by his side, the enigmatic Argentine singer-cum-poet (a crumpled, Latin American version of Paolo Conte) rattled through five or six tango-inspired numbers — some old, some new — before the ingredients began to gel. He is always a compelling showman. Dressed in shabby black, half-strutting, half-dancing, he wove back and forth across the stage, sometimes hiding in the shadows. Every arch gesture, every glance was cartoonish. It was playful and amusing, yes, but also a little repetitive. Once the rhythms became less rigid, though, the emotional pull of the music grew stronger. Melingo has won acclaim for giving tango a cool new allure, yet his work is at its most intriguing when it introduces elements of jazz and blues to the mix. If the bandoneon player Gustavo Paglia had the task of upholding tradition, the resourceful but understated guitarist Muhammad Habbibi El Rodra Guerra pushed the arrangements into foreign waters. His clipped lines — sometimes reminiscent of Marc Ribot at his most Latin — were a delight, constantly striking sparks against the piano playing of Pedro Onetto and Patricio Cotella’s supple double bass. The quartet’s backing vocals took on a ghostly tinge, especially on La Canción del Linyera, the song that had opened the show as an instrumental and returned in its full glory at the end. As for Melingo himself, he occasionally supplemented his trademark gravelly vocals with a mischievous blast on the kazoo. Yet Violeta Parra’s elegiacVolver a los 17 was proof that he can mine the deepest passions too. thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/music/livereviews/article4056635.ece (only available to account holders) Five albums you need to hear this week theguardian/music/musicblog/2014/mar/31/five-albums-need-to-hear-mac-demarco-timber-timbre Melingo: Linyera review – Buenos Aires stars inventive take on tango (World Village) Robin Denselow The Guardian, Thursday 3 April 2014 22.30 BST Daniel Melingo is one of the quirky celebrities of the Buenos Aires tango scene. Hes a singer and actor with a gruff voice and a stage persona that veers between Charlie Chaplin and Tom Waits. But hes also an impressive multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, keyboards and clarinet, and has set out to provide new and often experimental settings for Argentinas most celebrated dance style. As ever, he sings about his citys lowlife, and uses the persona of a linyera (a vagabond) as the starting point for his unusual and sophisticated songs. The opener, La Cancion De Linyera, is a jaunty tango driven on by the bandoneon concertina, but elsewhere he adds bluesy guitar lines and jazzy trombone, and includes a charming, crooned treatment of a song by the great Chilean singer Violeta Parra, and his own setting of a Lorca poem. Sadly, no translation of the lyrics is provided. theguardian/music/2014/apr/03/melingo-linyera-review
Posted on: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 22:52:20 +0000
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