Release Date: May 17, 2011
To the disappointment of pamphlet-waving radicals and nihilist Twitter hounds alike, the apocalypse never happened. It’s a good thing: the year just got its first great summer album in Amor de Días’ Street of the Love of Days.
“The face of God appears,” Alasdair MacLean (of The Clientele) purrs on the candlelit “House of Flint.” That’s it for end-of-the-Earth imagery—with trees in full bloom, the Spanish-influenced Street of the Love of Days is the stuff of 85-degree heat, little clothing and lots of cold cerveza. Starting with a plaintive guitar strum and icy piano stabs, it’s a summer vacation album for adults without a summer vacation. The songs often fly by, but MacLean and vocalist Lupe Nuñez-Fernández see no need to rush things; in the album’s first song, vocals don’t even materialize for more than two minutes.
A humid air permeates Street‘s 15 songs. For “House of Flint,” a horn section, toasty guitar and whispery drums riff on one another like friends without secrets. “Late Mornings” has swarming finger-picked guitar with Nuñez-Fernández whispering cosas buenas in the ear, the music hovering just a little longer than necessary for effect.
While the title track sports lyrics like “the elephant is in the room,” there is little awkwardness here. For embracing such a mélange of influences, Street of the Love of Days never sounds jumbled or clumsy (even if its title does). It effortlessly snakes from one song to the next. Bands try damn hard—and many fail—to make it look this easy. On the sauntering, sun-kissed title track, MacLean sings about “days and nights and nights and days,” as if he can’t tell which is which anymore.
By and large, the stories of Street seep into the veins like vodka lemonade.
But for those who like their summer a little more, um, altered, the beat poetry exorcism “Birds” is a head trip. Street‘s faint psych-noir subplot suggested by the darker entries is never clearer than on this piece, disturbingly dense despite the open space. Nuñez-Fernández’s vocals are in tune, as if this is a dub mix of a far more accessible pop song. The rest is chilling and scattered: fluttered wings, ghostly whistles and the lubb-lubbing of the bass make for the album’s most discomforting addition. “Your hair is floating over the river,” she sings before repeatedly asking “what’s wrong?” It’s a terrifically scary moment in an otherwise tranquil set.
Underneath, Street is all about those dynamics. Built on drum machine pitter-patter (and a melody akin to a sunburned Magnetic Fields), “Bunhill Fields” wears its lyrical weirdness like “You provoked me to be lonely/Words are geographical” with both confidence and humility, its circular guitar line underscored by frowning cello. “I’d bumped into a man quite broken/He’d been cruelly beaten up,” Nuñez-Fernández sings but with a mere turn of the head instead of tears. Despite the apparent aloofness, the narrator clearly doesn’t want to let something go.
But letting go is the theme here, and the one-two ending of “Wild Winter Trees” and the “Foxes’ Song” reprise sends it home. “I see you sleep next to me and it fills my heart with joy/But it’s time to go, all the way back home,” MacLean sings on the former, which takes its cue from Dylan’s “Fourth Time Around” for a sobering realization after the shuffling malaise of what precedes it.
With “Foxes’ Song” bookending the album, Street of the Love of Days begins and ends the same way youthful summers did: with great anticipation. The duo urges us to love these days—they’re fleeting. On the reprise, Nuñez-Fernández’ wordless vocals fade inevitably, just as memories will. Although it boasts few instant gratification moments, this album shouldn’t be forgotten so easily.
Amor De Dias – Street of the Love of Days Tracklist:
- “Foxes’ Song”
- “House of Flint”
- “Bunhill Fields”
- “Season of Light”
- “Late Mornings”
- “Harvest Time”
- “Dream (Dead Hands)”
- “I See Your Face”
- “Stone”
- “Street of the Love of Days”
- “Birds”
- “Touchstone”
- “Wandering”
- “Wild Winter Trees”
- “Foxes’ Song (reprise)”
