Search - Enrique Bunbury :: Hellville De Luxe

Return of the thin man

R. Suarez Giacoman | Mc Allen, Texas United States | 11/05/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It is a little bit odd to consider "Helville DeLuxe" as the return of Enrique Bunbury. Three years ago in 2005, he dismembered his band (El huracan ambulante) and apparently decided to retire from the stage for a while. I consider this period in which he supposedly "retired", one of the most brilliant and productive of his career. He recorded both a studio and live album with Nacho Vegas ("El tiempo de las cerezas" & "Liceu BCN"), toured with "Heroes del Silencio" and released a CD/DVD from that tour, wrote songs for Spanish artist Raphael and recorded several duets (studio and live) with many of his friends, Shuarma, Cabas, Aurora Beltran, Lila Downs, Mikel Erentxun, Jaime Urrutia. Four years after his last solo studio album (the awful "El viaje a ninguna parte"), Enrique delivers "Hellville DeLuxe"



And what an incredible album it is...



Without intending to catalog the album I find it to be more rock and roll oriented, there are little bits and pieces reminiscent of the multicultural-cabaret style he carried in his previous works, yet this album sounds different, powerful and more mature ("Si no fuera por ti" and "Bujias para el dolor" are two examples of what I mean) I never thought I would not miss the "Huracan ambulante" at all, the band that accompanies him on this album are the perfect complemet for Enrique's new songs and themes. If "Flamingos" had the clear influences from David Bowie, I would dare to say "Hellville Deluxe" is a Cohen-esque work, take for instance "Todos lo haremos mejor en el futuro"



As a lyricist, it is obvious he's evolved too, after writing some of what I consider his worst lyrics for "El viaje...", "Helville DeLuxe" is a superb follow up to what he did with Nacho Vegas in "El tiempo de las cerezas", the lyrics are deep, mature and highly autobiographical (take for example "Hay muy poca gente" or "El hombre Delgado..."), which may not be as surprising from the moment the whole album is dedicated to his partner JoseGirl. All those ridiculous accusations of plagiarism did nothing but increase the expectation for the album release, yes, he uses phrases written by other people in some songs (as he's always done, not sure why until now someone decided to bring that up) but he uses those to create new songs, so do many other artists who don't have to endure accusations from the media of something they aren't doing (as Enrique stated on his website "plagiarism is a perfectly defined word")



A great work and an incredible follow up to "El tiempo de las cerezas", we have yet to see how these songs perform live and what new arrangements will the band have for the songs written prior to this album. This is being released in America as a standard CD version with 11 tracks, in Spain there was a separate release on vinyl format that included the 11 tracks from the CD plus 4 extra tracks ("La herida secreta", "Bobby Peru", "Esto se hace" and the originally written for Raphael "Ven y camina conmigo), hopefully those will be released sometime in the future. I had the opportunity to listen to those and while they are very good tracks and an interesting remake of "Ven y camina conmigo", somehow they don't seem to fit well with the rest of the album.



Another impeccable release from Enrique, highly recommended.

"