Spanish singer-songwriter Leiva has just released a new record, packed with different sounds, painting pictures in my head of the Beatles, Björk, Neneh Cherry, Green Day, White Stripes, Coldplay, Jamiroquai and the Andes – fewer guitars this time, more electronics and, most importantly, 14 awesome quasi-duettos, each with a different woman. Oh, and a pinch of 1970s disco for good measure.
Since going solo ten years ago, Leiva’s released five albums. His latest, Cuando te muerdes el labio (“when you bite your lip”), came out on Friday 3rd December. I’m writing this with all of his 14 songs still throbbing in my head, all at once. Not a headache, though; just the enthusiasm made me turn up the volume so high, I might’ve zapped a few thousand neurons for life.
Let’s begin with an anecdote, from a recent interview. “I nearly left out Histéricos [“hysterical”, with Ximena Sariñana] because it didn’t seem that great; luckily Carlos Raya made me realise I was wrong,” Leiva commented in a podcast with the newspaper Marca. It ended up being the album’s first single – out of a total of four – and a huge success with fans. A Scottish musician friend of mine, completely unaware of who Leiva is, on hearing this song told me “It even sounds vaguely Lennonesque. The wee drum fill at the end,” he added, referring to Histéricos’ initial notes.
Raya, a producer and musician in his own right, has been accompanying Leiva for many, many years. You never achieve great things on your own; and so the good fortune of knowing – as Leiva does – which people are going to truly support you is crucial. All of the album’s female singers but one, all more or less widely acclaimed in their own countries – from Argentina to Mexico and Colombia to Spain – are friends of Leiva. He co-wrote 14 songs with them and didn’t give a damn about the audience’s possible reaction. That’s how empowering friendships can be.
“If people are happy,” he told top music hack Tony Aguilar the other day, “fantastic, I’ll do a triple sumersault, otherwise I won’t get upset. I just wanted to do something I really fancied and now feel my old self again, a proper musician. I thought I’d almost lost the sense of who I was after this long pandemic and the inability to play in front of crowds, which is what matters to me the most, has a lot to do with this sense of loss. I mean, records are just an excuse to be back on stage.”
The 41-year-old Madridian is doing ever so well also thanks to other people – a testament to both his musical acumen in discovering talent and his knowledge of the human soul. Leiva shows humility and depth, which he may not have been born with and has in all likelihood come to acquire by exploring, also with professional help, his own inner conflicts. He felt troubled, as stated in many interviews, and still looks a bit that way, I think. Check Diazepam, with Natalia Lafourcade.
That being said, up to three anti-depressives are mentioned in this album – for a reason. Leiva knows the workings of the soul but has done a lot of work on himself too; his songs, also prior to this record, are peppered with references to angst and associated “monsters”, i.e. Monstruos in Spanish, the name of his third album as a solo artist in 2016. “Diazepam helped me deal with problems I couldn’t handle on my own,” he told journalist Ángel Carmona on Spanish national radio.
Yet, I dare say that in Llegará (“it’ll come”), with Catalina García, we come to understand that drugs – legal and perhaps illegal – which helped Leiva calm his nerves in the past, today play no role. “I just need forests and fields to calm me,” they sing in a magical duetto, both voices soothingly dovetailing each other. Could this be a reference to his well-known passion for soul-mending mountaineering?
There are truly beautiful voices in this album: Zahara’s, Tulsa’s, Daniela Spalla’s, Natalia Lacunza’s, Silvana Estrada’s, Fer Casillas’ and others’. None stand out in particular. Spectacular singers. All of them.
This newly released record, packed with echoes travelling in separate directions, paints pictures in my head of the Beatles, Björk, Neneh Cherry, Green Day (those Wake Me Up When September Ends-like drums, masterfully played by Leiva), White Stripes, Coldplay, Jamiroquai and the Andes. It won’t disappoint any of the old fans and will conquer the hearts of younger crowds hankering for an intriguing blend of the European and Latin American.
But before I press the final full-stop button, I’d like to mention the song that’s made me think the most. It’s the only socio-political one of the entire album. Blancos fáciles (“easy targets”, with Nina de Juan) is a song about our times, about the abyss engulfing many – an abyss of solitude and a sense of self-worthlessness that has made people reveal their dark side online, cowardly safe in their anonymity. “Everyone has their rifle loaded/Everyone is armed,” they sing. “I’ve asked myself, is it just me?” A clear reference to his being a victim of online abuse.
There was a nasty episode about a year ago, possibly at the time of writing the “when you bite your lip” project: a big online newspaper made totally false claims about Leiva’s supposed hostility towards anti-Covid vaccines; they were proved wrong, but the journalists never apologised. Worse still, the article – a manual case of fake news in all its putrid glory – spurred an avalanche of online abuse towards the singer by individuals looking for any excuse to pick a fight. Where did that hatred come from? The song deals with exactly this, and the ephemeral joy it brings to vacuous people when they unload it onto others. And it wasn’t even the first time this had happened to him.
Shortly after that January 2021 nasty story, a famous English pianist and friend of Leiva’s was also brutally attacked by trolls; he subsequently left Twitter because of death threats. “Under their fake names, the emboldened cocks,” goes another line – a reference to angry lonely men, in an album full of enterprising women. And so, perhaps not just one song, but the whole album is socio-political, a search for a better version of ourselves, celebrated through the prism of love.
(Written by Alessio Colonnelli on 9 December 2021.)
Alessio Colonnelli 