3 out of 5

Label: BCore, Flexidiscos, DIscos Mascarpone

Produced by: Pablo Peiró (recorded by, mixed by)

Latching on to the punkier ethos of their debut, Cuello maintain their Pixies noiserock approach with pedaled-down momentum on followup Modo Eterno. Whereas their prior album, Mi Brazo Que Te Sobre, rather caught me off guard with its firehose of riffage and emotion, there’s something more streamlined here, though: it’s a busy sound, as before, with the same producer on board – Pablo Peiró – but Modo Eterno, plays within borders Mi Brazo did not. Songs no longer shift around a melody, with the dual guitars and singer José Guerrero finding counter-melodies that align; rather, there’s a beaten path to most songs, and Cuello are just beating them hard and fast. The energy behind that is as equally infectious as before, it just seems notable that there are less gang vocals here, and the focus feels exclusive to moving forward – the riffs are gone, in favor of trajectory. Lyrics (as translated) have probably taken a step up toward being more self-reflective, but one might wonder if that relative maturity has encouraged Guerrero to spotlight them more, hence leading to less repetition, a somewhat key element of Mi Brazo, and leading to the song structures / styles shifting a bit in favor of all that.

That the music is a bit more familiar this time does not equal bad, of course, and there are some real breakout moments where everything congeals and the band emerges above the fray with some standout moments. But one hopes there’s some stage beyond this – or maybe a middleground – where the evolutions can be maintained, but also mapped back to the kind of bustling creativity that made their debut an album full of surprises.