living la buena vida

Though it’s slowly developed a reputation for being “the city that shoves you back,” when I lived there in the mid-90s Philadelphia was twee-pop central. Not only was the city rife with soft-spoken local bands like Clock Strikes Thirteen (R.I.P!) and Snow Fairies, but for some reason the only records people were interested in buying were also by bands with a “smooch-first-bake cupcakes-later” aesthetic. Most of them haven’t aged so well (sorry, Wolfie) but the single sparkling exception is the Spanish pop group La Buena Vida.

La Buena Vida were signed to the Siesta label, whose releases have just now started trickling on to eMusic. Because you could only buy them on import, Siesta records were more expansive and therefore more exotic and coveted than the run-of-the-mill indies. La Buena Vida was the label’s crown jewel, a 10+ member collective that should have eclipsed and eventually surpassed Belle & Sebastian as everyone’s favorite heart-tuggers. In 2001 LBV released the miraculous Hallelujah!, and followed it six months later with the just-as-good Harmonica. The group managed a rare feat, retaining the softness of twee, but couching it in elegant, ambitious songs that arced and built and flourished.

After Harmonica the group’s records became increasingly hard to come by, and bad info on a shady website led me to believe they had broken up. Imagine my delight when I discovered that not only was La Buena Vida still active, they’d just released a new record, this time on the Sinnamon label. Vidinia is everything I loved about La Buena Vida, back again for another go. “Calles y Avenidas” lays it all out: the delicate melody, the low ache in Irantzu Valencia’s voice, the twinge of sadness that accompanies the big swoop of strings near the song’s conclusion. They also appear to have discovered country music: “Ayer Te Vi” has a lovely pedal-steel solo, and “Honorado Ciudando De Occidente” is all starlight and night sky.

I don’t understand Spanish well enough to make heads or tails of the group’s website (though I have a rough idea what ‘merchandising’ means — it means I’m about to spend $30 on a T-Shirt). For now it’s enough to know that La Buena Vida are still making records, and that those records are still full of warmth and charm and tenderness.

That I’ll probably never get to see them live is its own kind of heartbreak.