As Nelson Poket & Los Ex Novios, Nelson García created a brand of melodious pop-rock full of horns and soft guitars that sometimes drew as much from ’50s rock and roll as it did from the Latin American rock repertoire. It was as sweet as it was bitter, but always fun to listen to. His newest project’s sound, under his own name, is a bit harder to categorize. This is in part because it jumps around from genre to genre without a warning, heard in the preview track, “Adiós, Goodbye, Au Revoir,” from his yet-to-be-released album, Melody Nelson.
In the beginning, the track kind of throws you off with a doo-wop meets church choir harmonizing break, in which García sadly croons about the end of a party and, coincidentally, the tragic end of a romance. It’s a pretty clever start, as the song then evolves into a full-blown pop ballad in the style of the great Latin American ’60s and ’70s balladeers like Sandro. “Adiós, Goodbye, Au Revoir” has that theatricality to it. It also helps that García outright reveals his musical intentions through an album cover reminiscent of the era.
It’s a good track, but listening to his old material I couldn’t help but look for that harder, rock sound that he crafted with his old band and perfected with his newer material, and his collaborations with fellow indie artist, Juango Dávalos. “Adiós, Goodbye, Au Revoir” is a lukewarm track, in a sense. The music certainly conveys that feeling of impending goodbyes, but García’s delivery is too steady and neutral for such drama-heightened lyrics.