Mabe Fratti - Sentir Que No Sabes (2024) [Hi-Res]

Mabe Fratti focuses her songwriting and tightens the groove, piercing luscious pop arrangements with oddball experimental touches and dusty live drums, propelling her powerful voice into the clouds.

In just five short years, Fratti has worked at an alarming pace, constantly tweaking her sound over four surprising, and unusually approachable full-lengths. Her last, 'Se Ve Desde Aquí' was one of 2022's most exciting pop developments, and since then she's teamed up with her partner Hector Tosta on their hefty Titanic debut 'Vidrio'. Tosta returns on 'Sentir Que No Sabes' as producer, arranger, performer and co-composer, but it's Fratti's time to shine. Her voice sounds invigorated, more confident but with a startling range: she can shimmer from a smokey whisper into a heartbreaking upper-register coo in moments. There's plenty to dig into, but our immediate highlight is the lavish 'Enfrente', that starts as an orchestral, almost Portishead-esque melter, before it's lit up by Sakamoto/Sylvian-style digital chimes, careening into a double-time 'Brown Paper Bag' jazzcore stomp before it's done.

Fratti's ambition has always been impressive, and while her muddle of influences and inspirations might sound like an FBI evidence board, she exerts a dramatic level of control to rein things in. Her cello and voice roots the songs, allowing them to veer off track without losing the sense of harmony. She disrupts the album's pop momentum with short, noisy vignettes like 'Elastica II', a burst of slammed drums and spidery cello motions, and its celestial counterpart 'Elastica I', that sounds like Arthur Russell jamming with Brian Eno. These aren't throwaway moments, pulling the aspect ratio into widescreen and providing Fratti with more canvas for her most avant-garde instincts. The best of these is the brief 'Kitana', a video nasty style FM synth and cello interlude that works as a wrong-footed introduction to the blissful, choral closing track 'Angel Nuevo'.

These juxtapositions are the key to unravelling 'Sentir Que No Sabes': the soft-pop elegance of 'Pantalla-azul', with its smoove riffs and rubbery plucks; the inverted jazz lightness of 'Oidos'; the robotic folk elegance of 'Quieras-o-no'; and the industrial chug of the wonky 'Margen de indice'. Fratti is opening up her brain, challenging us to think about pop without borders; it's chamber pop, to a point, but her approach is exhaustively fearless - constantly challenging in a way that's all too rare.

Tracklist:
1.01 - Mabe Fratti - Kravitz (4:33)
1.02 - Mabe Fratti - Pantalla azul (2:58)
1.03 - Mabe Fratti - Elastica II (2:21)
1.04 - Mabe Fratti - Oídos (3:27)
1.05 - Mabe Fratti - Quieras o no (2:53)
1.06 - Mabe Fratti - Enfrente (4:04)
1.07 - Mabe Fratti - Elastica I (2:00)
1.08 - Mabe Fratti - Márgen de índice (2:41)
1.09 - Mabe Fratti - Alarmas olvidadas (3:52)
1.10 - Mabe Fratti - Descubrimos un suspiro (3:38)
1.11 - Mabe Fratti - Intento fallido (2:52)
1.12 - Mabe Fratti - Kitana (1:18)
1.13 - Mabe Fratti - Angel nuevo (5:20)