Sotomonte - Decadence & Renaissance (2025)

Country: Spain
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 21 Oct 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

When I found Sotomonte, I was actually looking for Spanish language music, because I've found a few gems in end of year lists. However, while Sotomonte are indeed Spanish, hailing from Bilbao, the largest city in Basque country, they sing in English and their overt influences seem English or American. This is their second album of psychedelic rock and a Spanish language website I should read more from (in translation) lists it as the Best National Record of 2024. That website is called La Habitación 235. This list tells me that Spain might produce as much psych as Portugal, but I've only reviewed one of the top twenty bands before, Moura and then not for this album.

I liked this on a first listen, though the opener didn't particularly grab me, feeling over-repetitive. Ironically, it's titled The Nothing. It grew on a second listen, as did the whole album, and I can see myself spending a lot of time with this one, not just here in the office but elsewhere too. This may well play incredibly well on headphones in a dark room, where I can truly lose myself in it. Much of it seems to swirl to me, as if it's written in circles like a musical rotoscope. Gambit, the second song and the one that absolutely captured me, does that often, especially during the heavy jam within its second half. Much of What a Game to Play feels precisely that way too.

One of the joys of Gambit and, to a lesser degree, The Nothing, is that I can't place the pieces that Sotomonte used to construct it. There are moments that feel familiar and the result is obviously a folky psychedelia with heaviness added at points in a way that American proto-metal bands did in the early seventies, but only when the song needs it. It was The Beauty of Tomorrow where I heard clearer influences, as it unfolds like Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull singing for the Grateful Dead. That combination of English and American influences may be why it's so elusive.

The fourth song may be called Blind Faith, but it doesn't feel like them. I heard some Bob Dylan in the vocals and chaotic west coast psych behind them. I love how chaotic these songs seem to get, because they aren't. The musicians, all six of them, are doing very deliberate things to interact in very deliberate ways. It's not chaos, but it can feel that way because it's so busy and what they're doing is unusual. It's harder to subconsciously deconstruct these songs and much easier to just let them wash over us.

If Blind Faith feels American, Montecristo/The Riddle feels English. It's almost John Lennon doing a guest slot on a Tyrannosaurus Rex song. Marc Bolan is all over this album, but ironically the song that most fits his early psychedelic style doesn't sound remotely like him singing. There are four musicians credited for vocals, all of which also play at least one other instrument, so I don't know who sings lead, but the names are all Spanish so I have no idea where at least one of them picked up a tinge of Liverpudlian accent. Maybe they listen to a lot of the Beatles.

I had no intention of running through these songs in order, but it's worked out like that. My Cross to Bear showcases some glorious seventies organ and the heavier aspect that manifests here and there coalesces into a Mountain vibe. Little Vilma gets all jiggy with it, literally, incorporating an obvious folk dance section that doesn't sound like it's played on a regular acoustic guitar, more of a mandolin. I can't resist the musical circles of What a Game to Play, almost mathematical in the Philip Glass fashion but drenched in folky psychedelia and with Wishbone Ash transitions. An outro, The Everything, as a bookend to The Nothing that kicked the album off, is over too quickly.

I liked this on a first listen but I liked it more on a second and loved it by the third. I have a feeling it's only going to get better and better with each further listen. That makes it accessible but deep and I'm still trying to figure out some of what they're doing after five or six listens. It's already an old friend and I'm pretty sure it's going to remain one for a long time. I only gave out a handful of 9/10s in 2024, albeit partly because I lost a good chunk of the year, but this deserves another one. It's going to be hard to move onto another album but, if I ever manage it, there's one preceding it, which is From Prayer to the Battlefield, released in 2021.