León

Regreso a Córdoba, the Best Latin American Emo Record

Alberto Léon

October 2nd was a very special day, one of the greatest Midwest emo albums of all time (in my professional opinion) was finally available on streaming services. Curious enough, the band who made it, Inválido, is not from Minnesota, Nebraska, Illinois, or any midwestern state. In fact, this band is not even from The United States, and this record is not in English.

Regreso a Córdoba was released in 2005, as Inválido’s first LP. After debuting with a messy but beautiful EP, Afónico Inefable, the band has consolidated its sound in an eight-track album that spans an hour and three minutes on a beautiful take on the typical Midwest emo, riff-heavy sound. One of the great things about Regreso a Córdoba is its more “ethereal” approach to the genre, with its guitars sounding more similar to what a 90s post-rock band might sound like.

However, I’m not here to get into the style, or how similar it might be to Mineral, or how the riffs are technical, or how the lyrics “put you back in high school,” when nerds would talk about any popular album in the genre. Different from the typical Midwest emo album, there is no sign of joy in this record. The guitars and lyrics lack the sweet in the sweet and sour, a description usually given to any record of this kind. This album has two outstanding characteristics (and that makes me love it): 1. The repetition (something that personally fascinates me, but I’ll talk about it another time) and 2. It’s very cryptic, to the point that the lyrics, which generally drown in the instrumentals, make no sense. I don’t see this as a bad thing, but I rather like it a lot although it’s not something that attracts music lovers or people in general.

I’m getting off-topic. How repetitive and ambiguous this project can be, I think it reflects your own personality and its imperfections. Humans tend to avoid leaving our comfort zone, and we seek tranquility in the same behaviors that we always repeat. And ambiguity represents how abstract our thoughts can be, –especially when we are vulnerable– looking for answers in something that does not exist yet falling into the same.

The first time I heard Regreso a Córdoba, I liked it, but I left it at that. A very short time later, I made a mistake with someone close to me, I revisited the album as this record was in my “just added” on my phone. I fell not only in love with the album, but also identified with it because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I was doing the very thing I wanted to avoid, always falling for the same thing, and there was this album to relate to.

As always, time passed and things were resolved, but I was still listening to that album. That’s when I started noticing everything I have written above.

The long pauses the singer makes mixed with the very ambiguous and repetitive lyrics made the album seem like an album from Tumblr. I thought this was pretty funny, but in a good way, I still appreciated the record. It is something so basic and redundant but it made me feel different emotions in each listening that stayed quite strong.

It’s like loving someone with their flaws, which makes them perfect, highlighting what makes you feel and enjoy as much as possible with that person. This contradictory feeling is what compensates for the obvious lack of traditional musicianship here.