Aterciopelados are a few things: a band that hails from Columbia, musicians who fuse North American and South American musical styles seamlessly, a band that has been doing it for almost 20 years, and a group I know almost nothing about. I saw the flyer for their show and noticed that it was being put on by Club Mercy, and anyone who is alive and attending shows in Santa Barbara knows that Club Mercy brings most of the bands worth seeing (e.g., Wavves at Soho tonight). Perhaps this should be a lesson to all of you floating around out there in internet-land: find out who promotes your favorite bands’ shows because they probably promote other great bands that you should listen to also. There are certain people that can be blindly trusted when recommending music, which is why I found myself at Soho on Saturday night.

I was glad that I followed my instincts and ended up in the crowd that was eagerly anticipating one of the few US tour dates that Aterciopelados would play this summer. Aterciopelados, which translates to “The Velvety Ones,” played only a handful of shows in the Northern Hemisphere, including Soho and Outside Lands, before heading south for a string of shows back home in Columbia. It is no surprise that Aterciopelados are playing North American festivals like Outside Lands. They have a certain appeal that is hard to pin down, but harder still to ignore. The lead singer Andrea Echeverri is so melodic while guitarist Hector Buitrago and the rest of the band brings an amazing amount of playful rock energy to the stage. Genre pegging would be difficult to do here, but all that you really need to know is that its some kind of rock and everything is sung in Spanish. I was happy to be moving on the dance floor to the Columbian tunes, although I was only able to translate one of every ten words sang by Echeverri. I didn’t care though. Their sound was amazing, and they had the crowd in an excited frenzy from the moment they took the stage until their last note. At one point they pulled out a banner with all the flags of the world on it and talked about our unity as people of this earth, to which the crowd rejoiced. At least I think that’s what she said. Spanish, English, Portuguese, or Quechua, it really doesn’t matter. Good music is good music, and I’d like to think that I have an ear for that.

 

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