The title might give it away, but
Corta Venas which translates to wrist-slitting is a 24-track set born out of heartbreak and despair. Following a formula that has worked well for the emerging regional Mexican teenage trio, Eslabon Armado once again bets on romantic sierreño ballads to strike a chord. And that they do.
Corta Venas, the chart-topping group’s third album of 2020, kicks off with a 45-second premise. “Pedro, have they broken your heart before or why do you write so much about heartbreak?” a female voice asks lead singer Pedro Tovar. His response: “Yeah, they have. I was with someone but that person didn’t want anything to do with me.” Then comes a cascade of beautiful and well-written emotional songs led by acoustic guitars and the electric bass that trace Tovar’s journey through heartbreak. “I’ve been writing songs ever since the last album dropped and we were waiting for December because winter is kind of like a season when people are sad �
Is that Daddy Yankee singing salsa on the very first verse of a collab with. Marc Anthony? Yes, indeed. Marc, he of the voice of gold, cedes the opening spotlight to Yankee, whose pipes are, perhaps not so surprisingly, very well-suited for a traditional salsa track. This made-for-dancing classic track, which, in vintage Marc Anthony style, begins with a slow intro that then breaks into an uptempo dance beat, pairs two icons who unexpectedly meet each other halfway. No, Marc Anthony doesn’t rap, but it would have been highly predictable to merely give Yankee a rap section. That’s in here too, but at the core of this Sergio George-produced track is a fusion of two very different distinct voices with a deep respect for the genre that will no doubt give an infusion of energy to the tropical charts.