3 out of 5

Produced by: ?

Label: Independent

After her rise to relative prominence with US crossover album Lotofire and the creative peaks of followup Sweet & Sour, Hot y Spicy, Ely Guerra had pretty much proven herself to any doubters.  From an artistic standpoint, then, it makes sense to take the opportunity to experiment a bit; for her next album – following a pause of live releases – she asked for contributers to provide the musical cues on which she’d base her tracks.  It’s not so much of a surprise, then, that the result is very much a mixed bag; though the release is tied together by Guerra’s pop sensibilities and interest in flourish, it doesn’t flow from song to song too effectively past its initial run of more singles-y cuts, the exciting first three tracks – opener Lontano’s Lotofire-like depth; Messy‘s Hot y Spicy playfulness – that set up high expectations for the wandering styles that follow.

Overall cohesiveness aside, there’s some great material when taken song by song.  Mi Condición and Lento Funeral are exactly the kind of complicated compositions that we’d wish to be borne from a collaboration of this nature, and the gorgeously slow and moving closer La Habitación makes the jazz version of this album that followed an incredibly intriguing listening proposition.

But, sure, this methodology produces some flat tracks as well: Búmeran never really develops past a basic feeling, and You Love Me is almost cloyingly simplistic.  Factored into the singles-collection feel of the disc, this only further mars its end-to-end listenability.

And sadly, Guerra has somewhat disappeared after this, with later material either live or as contributions on other works.  So maybe she completed her experimentation phase with Hombre Invisible, but while this (for now) ‘last’ outing isn’t perfect, it absolutely still holds enough promise to make me hope for another album.