The prestigious Argentinian singer-songwriter and rocker Fito Páez yesterday inaugurated Alma, the continuation of the Jardins Pedralbes Festival in its new location in Poble Espanyol. He did it in a big way, with a sold out and scheduling a new concert for July 24. The artist from Rosario, who in the eighties was part of a brilliant generation of Argentine musicians, alongside Charly García, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Andrés Calamaro and Gustavo Cerati, is experiencing a second artistic youth, having just turned sixty. His twentieth studio album, La conquista del espacio (2020), received a Grammy for best Latin rock album, and after the pandemic he has released no less than four albums. To top off a state of effervescent creativity, the El amor 30 años después del amor tour has been sweeping since September, when it performed a series of historic concerts at the Movistar Arena in Buenos Aires.
The tour, which had already arrived in Barcelona at the Fòrum CCIB Auditorium in October, now returned to our city to reaffirm the good form of the author of El amor después del amor, the most emblematic song of his repertoire, which gave title to the most important album of his career and which he performs first of all, as a spectacular start to the concert. The song also serves as the name for a Netflix biographical series that reviews his exciting life and career and that has motivated a record number of listens for his tracks on Spotify.
As a good Argentine, he was talkative and funny in the explanations of the songs and his wide repertoire of memories, in a concert that pivoted on the new album EADDA9223, a work that revisits and reimagines the best-selling album in the history of Argentine rock, with the help of illustrious guests such as Elvis Costello, Chico Buarque, Marisa Monte, Andrés Calamaro, Nathy Peluso, Mon Laferte, Antonio Carmona, Estrella Morente, Leiva and others. Alternating as pianist and guitar, they played with their current look the fast-paced Dos días en la vida and Naturaleza sangre, the sentimental jazzy ballad La verónica, the funk-rocker Tráfico por Katmandú or the ideal tanguera to put the Chicken skin, Pétalo de salt, with a memory of Spinetta included.
Special mention for the version of Un vestido y un amor – which was inspired by Cecilia Roth – sung before a prominent funk muscle medley. La rueda mágica, which ends with a great guitar crescendo, and Dylan’s Al lado del camino, which he dedicated to the writer Rodrigo Fresán, were also widely celebrated.
The concert also includes other emblematic songs from his extensive career, such as 11 y 6, a Circo beat in which he sings with feeling “mi pasado es real y el futuro libertad”, La Brillante sobre el mic – with indelible memories of the his relationship with Fabiana Cantilo, his first partner – Ciudad de pobres corazones, composed in a tragic moment after the murder of his grandmother, and, already in the encore, Mariposa tecknicolor o un Y dale alegría a mi corazón, a farewell cut, to seal a great communion with the fans, among whom there were a good number of countrymen. It was nineteen songs and two hours of concert in which he proved to be a consummate entertainer and a charismatic author who, accompanied by a large and well-rounded band, brought his classics to a vibrant current territory.
