Tomates En Verano know exactly what a guitar is for: tension, impact, and the occasional act of vandalism. On El color del mar, the Mar del Plata trio turn shoegaze, gothic post-punk, and 1990s alternative rock into a record full of sudden pressure changes, serrated edges, and hooks that keep poking through the distortion. Five albums in, they sound less concerned with refinement than with making every shift in volume count.
Pixies are all over this record, and that is meant as praise. You hear it in the sudden changes of pressure, the clipped guitar figures, the way Ignacio Giobellina can leave a song hanging on a few dry notes before dropping something much heavier into the room. There’s some Joey Santiago in that instinct: the understanding that a guitar doesn’t need seventeen pedals and a doctoral thesis to make you nervous. There’s something in the way the guitars and melodies crash against each other that echoes Lush, while the more expansive passages carry the oceanic airiness of Slowdive’s Just for a Day. The Breeders, Liz Phair, and Sonic Youth all rub elbows here, too, without turning the album into a museum tour of shoegaze and alternative rock.
Carina Monjeau is the reason much of this works as well as it does. At times, her airy, cool delivery strongly recalls My Bloody Valentine’s Bilinda Butcher, sounding almost effortless while the guitars are busy throwing furniture around behind her. That contrast gives the record much of its personality. She never sounds as though she has to fight the arrangement for space, and Graham Sutton’s production deserves credit for that. Sutton, of Bark Psychosis, gives these songs mass without stuffing every available frequency until the record suffocates. The band’s solid bass lines carry as much character as a guitar hook, and Pedro Moscuzza’s drumming keeps the heavier sections from becoming a shapeless pile of amplification. There is muscle here, but there is also movement.
At times, El color del mar feels like something you might have stumbled across on a particularly strange Lilith Fair bill in 1997, right after a band indebted to The Breeders. It would feel equally at home on a Lollapalooza stage, with staff handing out earplugs to anyone braving the volume near the front. Farther back, some listeners might lie in the grass and give themselves over to the music’s reverie, looking up until they feel as though they could fall into the sky. The dayglo decade of the 90s hangs heavily over the album, yet the trio have enough personality to avoid sounding like collectors showing off their favorite records.
The title translates as The Color of the Sea, though the band connects it to internal conflict and the sensation of living in a world where everything seems slightly misplaced. That idea fits these songs rather well. They keep shifting their balance: thick guitars give way to cleaner passages, sweetness brushes against abrasion, and quieter sections make the harder moments hit with greater force.
Francisco Raccanello Monjeau adds piano to Algo común, while Luana Giobellina Monjeau of Buenos Vampiros plays bass on El color del mar and Todo comienza en casa. Both appearances broaden the arrangements without turning them into showcases.
After more than twenty years together, Tomates En Verano sound less interested in proving their credentials than in making a record with big guitars, strong songs, and enough instability to keep the volume knob within reach. El color del mar makes a convincing case that the old alternative-rock machinery still has plenty of dangerous moving parts.
Listen to El Color del Mar below, out now via Casa del Puente Discos. You can order the album here.
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