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Justicia (2020)

The new Fernando Viciconte record is not so new…it comes to the world fully realized for the first time: his second full-length album entirely in Spanish, the intended follow-up to the groundbreaking Pacoima. Once again, like Pacoima, it is the brainchild of Viciconte and long-time co-conspirator Luther Russell and a love-letter to the Argentine rock of the early Seventies—or rock nacional—that influenced them then and ever since. The greatest export of rock nacional was the late genius Luis Spinetta or El Flaco, as his people lovingly nicknamed him. After a long, colorful trip together to visit Fernando’s family in Argentina for Dos Mil, or “Y2K” to us ugly Americans, the pair sat on Viciconte’s porch on Belmont & 48th and dreamed it up: songs shaped out of Spinetta-like chords and stories told from la tierra abajo: The Pigman of Cañuelas–a poor, slow, deformed soul who was endlessly picked on by gauchos on the dark trails of the farm town where Fernando’s father and grandfather were raised. Songs about the savage human cost of the unholy alliance between fascism and greed (glad that’s not a thing anymore!). Songs about feeling like a rat in a cage and the existential screams of one simple statement: ‘¡Solamente la vida me da!’ or ‘It’s only my life you’re giving me!’ The record would encompass two sides: earthy and acoustic like the campesino folk-rock of vintage León Gieco, then molten and electric like the blistering rock psicodélico of Spinetta and his ilk. The conduit would be their most ambitious piece of music: “Cielo Sin Color”, the nearly 9-minute tale of a woman slowly going insane and her denial of the encroaching storm in her mind’s skies. The record would be called Justicia, and they knocked the “soft” side out in Fern’s basement and the “loud” side at the old Jackpot! Studios with a hand-picked cadre of favorite musicians: Fred Trujillo on bass, Sean Oldham on drums and Paul Brianard on guitar. Now that the pieces have finally been assembled it resembles nothing less than what was imagined nigh on 20 years ago: a fever dream split in two, looking back on the age trapped in amber that was hearty, proud Argentina…and what become the modern world: a funhouse ride on a slippery slide to hell, full of hypocrisy, callousness and corruption. But what remained, as ever with Fernando, was hope. And a little high-powered marijuana butter.