The famous Argentine singer-songwriter and rocker Fito Páez inaugurated yesterday the 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 programming a new concert for July 24. The artist from Rosario, who in the eighties was part of a brilliant generation of Argentine musicians, along with Charly García, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Andrés Calamaro and Gustavo Cerati, is living a second artistic youth just turned 60 years old. 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 tour El amor 30 años después del amor has been sweeping since last September, when he performed a series of historic concerts at the Movistar Arena in Buenos Aires.
The tour, which had already stopped in Barcelona at the Auditori Fòrum CCIB 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 in his repertoire, which gave the title to the The most important album of his career and which he plays right off the bat as a spectacular start to the concert. The song also serves as the name of a Netflix biographical series that reviews his exciting life and career and has led to a record number of listeners to his songs on Spotify.
Like a good Argentine, he was talkative and entertaining in explaining the songs and his populated trunk of memories, in a concert that revolved around the new album EADDA9223, a work that revisits and reimagines the best-selling album in the history of Argentine rock, with the help of distinguished 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, 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 tango to make your hair stand on end Pétalo de sal, with I remember Spinetta included.
The version of Un vestido y un amor –which Cecilia Roth inspired him– deserves a special mention, chanted before a medley of prominent funk muscle. Also highly celebrated was 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.
In the concert there is no shortage of other emblematic songs from his extensive career such as 11 and 6, a Circus beat in which he sings with feeling "my past is real and the future is freedom", Brillante on the mic -with indelible memories of their relationship with Fabiana Cantilo, his first partner–, Ciudad de pobres corazónes, composed at a tragic moment after the murder of his grandmother, and, already in the encore, Mariposa tecknicolor or a And give joy to my heart, as a farewell, to seal a great communion with the fans, among whom there were a good number of countrymen. There were 19 songs and a two-hour concert in which he proved to be an accomplished entertainer and a charismatic author who, backed by a large and well-connected band, took his classics to a territory that is vibrant today.
