Helado Negro
Invisible Life
(Asthmatic Kitty)

Helado Negro's Roberto Lange reminds me of Keren Ann (born Keren Ann Zeidel) in that he's starting to allow more English words into his discography, but without completely abandoning his outer-American roots.

After moving to New York and signing to Blue Note, it's inevitable that Zeidel wouldn't sing exclusively in French. In Lange's case, he still sings primarily in Spanish, but Invisible Life offers his first English-language songs, including the fine single "Dance Ghost," which I wrote about in this post.

Like Keren Ann, who has lived in France and Israel, the Brooklyn musician and visual artist has lived all over the place, including Florida and Georgia (his parents hail from Ecuador, but he grew up in the States). Consequently, writers tend to focus on the fact that he's spent time in humid climates, but it seems reductive to describe his music as "tropical" or "summery." If anything, there's a cool vibe to his material, since he has a blurred way of singing as if he were reticent to get too close to the mic. In other words, he draws more from abstract Latin traditions like bossa nova and Tropicália than passionate, heart-on-sleeve forms like mariachi.

The blend of English and Spanish beguiles as much as the mix of soft-spoken folk with rumbling bass and bubbling tape loops. Possibly due to his South American heritage, some have compared him to Argentina's Juana Molina, but I hear more A.R. Kane and Scritti Politti. If those British acts didn't sing in Spanish, they conjured up a similar effervescent, quasi-psychedelic atmosphere (Molina does, too, except she uses her multi-tracked voice more like an instrument).

Naturally, Devendra Barnhart lends his distinctive vibrato to one of the Spanish-language numbers, "Lentamente" (the Venezuelan-American singer-songwriter also sometimes sings in Spanish on his own records). Other guest artists include Jon Philpot, Matt Crum, Eduardo Alonso, and Jan St. Werner from Mouse on Mars.

From start to finish, Invisible Life is a blissed-out experience that may bore those who prefer their electronic music with more anger and energy, but I've got room in my heart for both. I know nothing about the state of Lange's mind, but his third full-length suggests a man at peace with himself and his place in the world.