Meridian Brothers: Devoción (Works 2005 – 2011)

Not brothers. One Colombian who sings everything, plays everything, and mixes everything. In recent years he’s been performing live and gathering other musicians under the Meridian Brothers name, but in the beginning he was it. Devoción‘s compilers picked tracks from three albums that are available through the Colombian label La Distritofónica. Soundway brought out Desperanza, his latest, in 2012.

Earlier in the year he appeared on their musical collective album Ondatrópica, via the band he was in, Frente Cumbeiro. On Devoción — all pre-2012 songs — he’s still moving towards the more Colombian-trad sound of those two albums. His music has the kind of off-kilter uneasy-whimsical surrealism that made me nod when I heard that he was inspired by Argentinean indie. It’s playful without being safe. Those warped animal sound effects would have been twee if they were more hospitable, and the humans repeating their wooting noises in “El Enamorando” are eerie with the ingenue eeriness of a stuffed toy.