Review: Gepe — Ciencia Exacta

I kept myself isolated from the Gepemania because I felt Gepe’s music was leaning towards pop a bit more than I would really like. Somehow I made it through “Ciencia Exacta” and I loved it — also helped the fact that the record is short, at 32 min front to back).

This new record is a very homogenous and easy to listen — in a good sense — precisely because of its folk-pop foundations and straightforward instrumentation. There are some parts in the record where I feel I could very well listening to a Juanes’ song (don’t kill me) and that feeling kind of bothers me, mainly because I still like the record. And because I think Juanes is a sell-out, mediocre musician. Gepe’s music falls on the very border of the cool and the sucky, on the border of what could be misconstrued as cheap pop, but he plays his cards very well by balancing the topics and the genres along the record, and, of course, by making a cover of some of the best songs in the Latin American eclectic musical repertoire: Café Tacvba’s “Las Flores”.

There are two songs I especially like. “Flor de Canelo” is a song with Andean influences that Gepe managed to craft into an almost perfect piece with a beat reminiscent of Los Fabulosos Cadillac. Gepe’s voice fits perfectly in this song, almost as if the song made the voice and not the other way around. The second song I like the most is “Hasta Cuándo Con”, a forthright critique of that part of society that thinks that greatness and personal (or professional) fulfilment can only be achieved outside Latin America. Gepe thinks it’s Latin America’s time, and he expresses that with folksy-Mexican influences.

Not long ago, including a sax on any pop song would be a sure sign of a corny song worthy of the fastest forward-skip in the world. Who doesn’t remember those Christian Castro or Ana Gabriel songs that you knew — that you could bet your yearly salary on — that would include a pointless solo sax that would mark the beginning of the climax of the song. It was not only boring but depressing to hear song after song with the same formula in the radio. Somehow, Gepe brought back and made the sax cool again. On some songs, the sax is blended in the instrumentation but in others it plays a prominent role that’s hard to miss. And all of the sudden I seem to have forgotten all those lousy pop songs from the past, and I find myself enjoying a song with a sax solo again.

“Ciencia Exacta” is a record that positively changed the way I receive and perceive some music nuances which I would hate in any other artist. Maybe I am just getting old, maybe it’s just that Gepe knows how to make good songs.

PS: you can skip “Cine en tu Cama” baldly bad that you are better off skipping it.