Fuegos de Artificio – OSCAR: Cut and paste (Wichita, 2016)

Lo malo de comenzar un álbum de debut con un tema como Sometimes es que ya has dejado el listón demasiado alto. Y lo peor no es eso, sino que encima, durante los restantes diez cortes, dé la sensación de que poco más quedaba en la recámara, de que no es demasiado lo que nos vamos a encontrar durante Cut and paste, el debut del londinense Oscar Scheller, un músico acostumbrado a morar y registrar sus canciones en el dormitorio y que con este trabajo dio el salto a una compañía de discos y a una distribución mayor.
Más defectos: esa constante fijación vocal y sonora por Magnetic Fields e incluso por la vertiente más pedante de Morrisey/Smiths, lo que no favorece demasiado a una escucha libre de ciertos bagajes.
Por lo demás, un trabajo agradable pero que no pasará a los anales del Pop. Habrá que seguir esperando…

“Oscar Scheller’s debut album, Cut and Paste, isn’t going to do that either, though a decade ago it might have propelled him to the heights of, say, Jack Peñate, another British cheeky chappy with strong pop instincts. The young Londoner makes blown-out indie jams with magnetic melodies and an obvious British lineage: “Sometimes” echoes the melody of Blur‘s “Coffee and TV,” and his leaping baritone bears a strong resemblance to both Damon Albarn and Morrissey. (For the latter, see also, “But then I see your face and I want to die,” from “Fifteen,” which moves at the pace of a carnation’s twirl.) He samples, or rather, for budgetary reasons, emulates samples of old school hip-hop and chintzy dub—“Good Things,” laced with his plaintive croon, sounds a lot like Saint Etienne‘s cover of “Only Love Can Break Your Heart.” The combination aligns him with a non-British Anglophile: Scheller’s romantic, hotch-potch confections recall Jens Lekman‘s early records, and share a similarly endearing innocence.
His lyrics are also naïve, but lack Lekman’s charm and wit. They’re mostly underdeveloped portraits of youthful anxieties: over masculinity (not knowing which football team to support), the passing of time, and whether the promised future will come to pass. “Nothing’s as it seems/There’s a land where hopes don’t meet with dreams,” he croons on the twinkling, dreamy “Gone Forever,” the record’s sharpest song. “I feel scared of all the things to come.” As for his own future, Scheller has written for Lily Allen and short-livedSugababes revival MKS. Cut and Paste is hooky and appealing; with a gear change, he could easily move into a realm where people are actually paying attention. For now, he’s a very sweet stream in a cultural backwater” (Pitchfork)

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