Almendra (Almendra album)

Background and development

Almendra was formed in the porteño barrio of Núñez in Buenos Aires. Luis Alberto Spinetta and Emilio del Guercio became friends while attending the San Román high school in Belgrano. They published a magazine, La costra degenerada, with their own articles and drawings and shared common interests and points of view about music, sex, power and religion. Spinetta was a fan of the Beatles, but del Guercio was more interested in folk music. They were inspired by surrealism and the psychedelic experience, although they had not used drugs at that point. Edelmiro Molinari and del Guercio were in a band called Los Sbirros — making cover versions of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Shadows and Los Teen Tops — along with Ángel del Guercio, Ricardo Miró, Santiago "Chago" Novoa and Eduardo Miró (later replaced by del Guercio). Spinetta had joined Los Larkins, where Rodolfo García was the drummer. Spinetta and García then joined Los Masters, a band led by Guido Meda; the group had a succession of names, including Los Beadniks, Los Beatniks and Los Mods. The groups merged, although Medea disliked the idea and stepped aside. Almendra was ready to start playing, but García had to serve in the military and they waited a year until he returned. At this embryonic stage Spinetta had composed "Plegaria para un niño dormido" and "Zamba", a song he would record in 1982 as "Barro tal vez". During the second half of the 1960s, Argentina and the world were experiencing political, social and cultural changes. The Argentine Revolution overthrew the government of Arturo Umberto Illia in June 1966, establishing Juan Carlos Onganía as a military dictator. Leonid Brezhnev was appointed General Secretary of the USSR, LSD advocate Timothy Leary was sentenced to 30 years in prison and the Vietnam War escalated. The Beatles released Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, influential examples of the emerging countercultural genre of psychedelic music. Tango opera María de Buenos Aires by Ástor Piazzolla and Horacio Ferrer premiered, the literary Latin American Boom (including Pablo Neruda and Julio Cortázar) flourished, Mercedes Sosa made bold political statements as a preeminent exponent of nueva canción and the French New Wave was rewriting the language of cinema. The group absorbed these local and international cultural influences. Spinetta became interested in Friedrich Nietzsche, particularly Thus Spoke Zarathustra (which inspired the Almendra song, "Hermano perro"). Lalo Schifrin, Thelonious Monk, Tom Jobim, the Rolling Stones and Les Double Six were also cited as influences.

In 1967, Los Gatos released their first single, "La balsa", backed with "Ayer nomás". The song catapulted the burgeoning "rock nacional" scene in Buenos Aires, establishing the commercial viability of rock music sung in Spanish, and turning what originally was an underground scene into a widespread youth culture phenomenon. "La balsa" sold over 250,000 copies, an impressive number for that time, especially for a song with Spanish lyrics that differed from the cheerful and shallow efforts of the contemporary nueva ola movement. Spinetta stated: "We were with Emilio [del Guercio] in front of the television, a Saturday afternoon, when we heard "La balsa". Then we said, "but these kids are awesome ... let's be hippies from tomorrow!" After a Los Gatos concert, Spinetta met producer Ricardo Kleiman and invited him to the band's rehearsals. When Kleiman heard the band play he signed them to RCA Records, and in November 1968 Almendra released their first single: "Tema de Pototo", backed with "El mundo entre las manos". Almendra began playing live, with performances during the summer of 1969 in Mar del Plata and an appearance at the Ancón Festival in Peru. Their Buenos Aires debut was at the Di Tella Institute as part of Three Beat Shows, where they introduced "Fermín", "Ana no duerme" and "Que el viento borro tus manos", songs which would appear on their first studio album. Almendra released a second single, "Hoy todo el hielo en la ciudad" backed with "Campos verdes"; it was also released in Peru, where it was more successful than it was in Argentina. Between April and September 1969, the band recorded their first LP at TNT Studios, Buenos Aires, while a third single ("Tema de Pototo", backed with "Final") was released. At the time of Almendra's release, the influence of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had overshadowed the success of the nueva ola, exemplified by the popular teen pop music TV show, El Club del Clan.

Composition

Almendra, considered one of Argentina's first rock albums, is characterized by stylistic diversity; it fuses elements of contemporary pop music, jazz, tango and Argentine folk music. A major influence was the Beatles, particularly their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. For instance, in "Muchacha (ojos de papel)", lyrics such as "ojos de papel" ("paper eyes") and "pechos de miel" ("honey breasts") are reminiscent of those in "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" ("newspaper taxis" and "marmalade skies"), and "Laura va" was inspired by "She's Leaving Home". Tango influences may be heard in "Plegaria para un niño dormido" and "A estos hombres tristes". According to Carlos Polimeni of newspaper Página/12,

In Almendra's first record are the Beatles, Cortázar, the French May, free jazz, the experimentation of the Di Tella, the avant-garde tango, the folklore of projection, the French Nouvelle Vague, Borges, and the new trends in national plastic arts, among other influences, but none markedly mentioned or honored axiomatically.

Andrés Torrón of El Observador noted a similarity between Almendra and Pink Floyd's 1969 album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Almendra's lyrics (primarily by Spinetta) have been widely studied for their lyricism, poetic quality, precise use of language, and rich visual imagery; as well as the innovation of singing them in Spanish.

Songs

The album opens with "Muchacha (ojos de papel)", one of the most celebrated songs in Argentine rock history. Spinetta dedicated the song to Cristina Bustamante, his girlfriend at the time, and has compared the romantic ballad to songs like "Tu nombre me sabe a hierba" by Joan Manuel Serrat and "Julia" by the Beatles. Musician Alejandro del Prado described its lyrics as "almost pornographic at the time", citing phrases such as "pechos de miel" ("honey breasts") and "quedate hasta el alba" ("stay until dawn"). The length of the nine-plus-minute "Color humano", written by Edelmiro Molinari, concerned the record label since it precluded radio play. The jazz-inspired jam session is composed of two relatively short vocal segments surrounding a five-minute guitar solo by Molinari. The lyrics of "Figuración" have been described as metaphysical, with Spinetta urging the listener to disfigure themselves. In "Ana no duerme", a sleepless girl is restlessly waiting; its lyrics refer to the need of many teenage girls to repress their sexuality. Spinetta described the title character as "that being that is always waiting. That girl who hopes to be loved, who expects a little bit of friendship, of understanding, who wants to leave her vulgar world of womanhood, who wants to occupy another place. [...] At that time, a girl of 16 or 17 was not the woman she can be today." The strongly paced track, with a rhythmic shift representing the "interrupted dreams" of the title character, has been compared to Pink Floyd's "See Emily Play". Although the "Ana" in the song was long thought to be Ana María Spinetta (Luis Alberto's sister), he denied it on more than one occasion. Film producer Ana Aizenberg claims to be the inspiration after her affair with Spinetta.

"Fermín" describes a mentally ill character in an institution. The song changes a line from the French folk song, Marlbrough s'en va-t-en guerre, from "Mambrú se fue a la guerra, no sé cuándo vendrá" ("Mambrú left for the war; I do not know when he will return") to "Fermín se fue a la vida, no sé cuando vendrá" ("Fermín left for life; I do not know when he will return"). According to Spinetta, "life for the insane is like war for the sane." Reflecting on the track, Spinetta said: "In front of my house lived an incredible character called Carlitos, a retarded boy, who is in part the personification of Fermín for me. With Carlitos we shared moments of joy when we were kids. Although he could not play ball with everyone, he felt accompanied in his tremendous problem when we were with him. It is also an apology, because I remember that his mother punished him a lot, even in front of the other boys. I do not know if the dregee of illness of the song's Fermín is as actue as that of Carlitos, but serves to define the situation of the alienated as a propitious cell to receive the most aberrant injustices. "Plegaria para un niño dormido" urges not to wake a poor child up, letting him be happy in his dreams. The criticism of society's injustice is, in Spinetta's words, "a complaint made with tenderness." He called it "the symbol of a Christian ideology: neighborliness, solidarity." "A estos hombres tristes" was inspired by the melancholy of Sundays in Argentina, with Spinetta saying: "Sunday was always a sad day, I do not know why. At the same time it was happy because there was football, the family gathered, there was good food. The importance that was given to the weekend in our country in those years was tremendous. But the personal solitude at that time was very clear." The album ends with "Laura va", a baroque pop song which took Spinetta a year and a half to write; Spinetta described it as an attempt to emulate the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home".

Release

Almendra was released on November 29, 1969 on Vik, a subsidiary of RCA Records. Some place the release of the album in early 1970, time in which the band released a typewritten, photocopied flyer that said: "Over the course of six months of intense work, we have learned that what is transcendent is no longer owned by the author and belongs everyone. That is why January 15 is an important date for us and for you: it is the release of our first LP to you." "Muchacha (ojos de papel)", with "Ana no duerme" as its B-side, was released as the album's only single on January 20, 1970.

The band produced a 35mm black-and-white short film featuring "Campos verdes" and "El mundo entre las manos", which was shown in cinemas as part of the newsreel Sucesos Argentinos. On June 6, 1969, Almendra presented the album in Teatro Coliseo with Vox Dei, Leonardo Favio and Los Abuelos de la Nada. They made television appearances on Tropicana, Sabados circulares, Sótano beat, and "an unhappy appearance" on Bernardo Neustadt's show. Commercial success arrived when "Muchacha (ojos de papel)", was used in a television commercial for fabrics.

Cover art

The iconic album cover, designed by Spinetta, shows a distressed man with his hair covered by a scarf and a tear running down his cheek; a toy arrow is stuck on his head, and he is wearing a pink shirt with the name of the band. Spinetta used tempera and pencils on mat paper. RCA considered the artwork incomprehensible and noncommercial, and shelved its first version. Spinetta said, "We were not going to allow the record to be released without it. I had the picture in my head very clearly, and I went home and did it again. We did not want to leave things in the hands of mediocre company dudes that make album covers like [sausages]." Emilio García said in 2008 that the label thought most record buyers were women, and artwork should depict men as handsomely as possible: "They could not believe it, because the cover of an LP (at the time) featured artists' faces or holding electric guitars; we came out with a cover like that, which I still consider absolutely great."

On the album's track listing, each song is identified with a symbol from the cover: a teardrop, an eye, or a toy arrow. The teardrop iidentifies "Muchacha (ojos de papel)", "Figuración", "Plegaria para un niño dormido" and "Que el viento borró tus manos"; the eye, "Color humano" and "A estos hombres tristes", and the toy arrow "Ana no duerme", "Fermín" and "Laura va". The inner sleeve describes each icon:

Emilio del Guercio said that the toy arrow represents absurdity and the teardrop sentimentality and melancholy. According to Argentine graphic artist Rep, the artwork conveys a grotesque, dramatic flavor and the feeling that the album should be taken seriously but not too seriously.

Critical reception

The album received generally positive reviews, with Rodolfo Alchourrón's orchestral arrangement of "Laura va" universally acclaimed. According to the rock magazine Pelo, "This album may be the synthesis of a new music emerging. A La Prensa review described it as "a thin melancholy," and it "[faces] its manifestation with the seriousness and depth of who wants to give a testimony of their world, a concern usually oblivious to young authors and performers." The magazine Gente was enthusiastic: "Did you already listen to the first LP by the group Almendra? Do not waste time, fool, because I assure you it is the best album of the beat genre produced in our country."

A Clarín review was harsh: "The lyrics of each track do not have an equal level, with the aggravation of being poorly fused with musical metrics." Spinetta said that much of his resentment of the press was born at that time, when he "realized that large magazines like Gente or Siete Días fabricated articles. They put what they wanted." In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Iván Adaime gave the album a five-star rating, calling it a masterpiece and writing that it "is great from the beginning till the end" and "not only one of the first Argentinean rock albums, but one of its best."

Legacy

Almendra has been voted the most important record in Argentine rock history on various occasions. A July 1985 survey by journalist Carlos Polimeni for Clarin ranked Almendra as by far the greatest album in the history of Argentine rock music; respondents included local musicians Charly García, Gustavo Cerati of Soda Stereo, Celeste Carballo, Miguel Mateos, Alejandro Lerner and Raúl Porchetto. In 2007, the Argentine edition of Rolling Stone ranked it sixth on its list of "100 Best Albums of Argentine Rock". In 2006, the Latin alternative-music magazine Al Borde ranked Almendra 10th on its list of 250 most-important Latin rock albums. "Muchacha (ojos de papel)" was second on MTV's Top 100 Songs of Argentine Rock and Rock.com.ar's Top 100 Argentinean Songs of the Last 40 Years. Al Borde ranked the song 45th on its list of 500 Most Important Songs of Ibero-American Rock.

The album had a seminal influence on Argentine rock. During the 1960s, a generation of musicians from the La Cueva bar on Avenida Pueyrredón was trying to reflect an everyday reality absent from popular music since the tango era; they catapulted the development of a movement music journalists called "progressive music", which included Almendra and La Cueva performers Los Gatos and Manal. These bands were the pillars of what is known in Argentina as rock nacional ("national rock"), and rock en español in general. Serious, artistic Spanish-language songs were unprecedented in the country. According to Rolling Stone, Almendra reached "one of the highest levels of quality, innovation and precocity" in Argentine music; "if not pioneers (because there is no Almendra without Los Gatos), they put into 3D a variety of sounds, accents and adjectives which are still the textbook of the new generation."

Los Gatos were influenced by beat music, and Manal by the blues; Almendra made an impact with a uniqueness reflected in surreal lyrics and album art, and the lack of an article preceding their name. Spinetta used Spanish idiosyncratically, writing "y el ave aquel" instead of the correct "y el ave aquella" in "Fermín" and changing the accent of some words (a poetic device criticized by some members of the press, evident in the pronunciation of "figúrate" in "Figuración" and "plegaria" in "Plegaria para un niño dormido"). This use of the accent characterized Argentine rock's second generation - whose most notable representative was Sui Generis - until bands like Virus continued to use the language ingeniously. According to Emilio del Guercio,

Today those songs are classics but, at that time, they were considered cutting edge. Eventually I realized that most of them are threaded by the songwriting tradition of our country. They are Argentine songs. The real avant-garde revolutionizes what it inherits. Almendra was heir to the best Argentine music, and combined its elements without prejudice.

Almendra is considered a paradigm of the growing influence of the youth-led counterculture of the 1960s on Argentina at that time, as well as a representative of that generation. After Spinetta's death, President of Argentina Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said: "That record of the teardrop, when we would call albums long plays, and "Muchacha (ojos de papel)", I will never forget them." Charly García, also on the occasion of Spinetta's death, stated: "I can not describe the shock that Almendra's first album caused me. For me, "La balsa" was the originator of Argentine rock, but without a doubt, Luis Alberto and company were its architects."

Track listing

All tracks written by Luis Alberto Spinetta except where noted.

Personnel

Credits adapted from the liner notes of Almendra.