Amor Fati: Love Fate

“I would have wanted more collaborators,” writes Amaury Perez, “but everyone is busy so DIY.” For an almost one-man outfit (he has help from a saxophone player on “Hard to Forget You” and “Automatic Mary”) he does a very credible impersonation of a four-or-five-man rock band. He is the drummer, the guitarist, the bassist, the singer, and the keyboard player. He plays all of the instruments well, although his voice is a little too thin to give some of the songs the kind of oomph that they’re asking for. It seems made for the understated romantic cynicism of the indie world and he’s using it in arrangements that could be transferred to a mainstream rock band and sung lustily in a stadium. The guitars and drums strut provocatively in “Just a Woman”, but when the narrator tells his girlfriend that, “I am still your man,” his voice strains and you can imagine the girlfriend raising one eyebrow and looking unconvinced.