After the exciting and ethereal “I always dream so” (20), Nico Roiga musician hardened in a thousand battles, returns to the scene with his fifth album, “This cold is worthless” (23), his warmest, most joyous and poetically close work to date.
Roig, irony and tenderness intact, his trademark, flies free and parks the vaporous intimate textures of the metaphysical pop of his first steps, opening a colorful range of sounds and fragrances, with the Mediterranean light gently tanning each one of the grooves of the record. exploring, embracing and filtering through his own pores, traditional music from the world and from his imagination. Accompanied by the most florid jazz and folk scene of the moment: Silvia Pérez Cruz, Rita Payés, Lucía Fumero, Alessio Arena, Alba Morena, Pol Batlle, Aleix Tobias, Cra Rosa, Dídak Fernández, Martín Meléndez, Juan Pastor, David Soler Pina , Ramón Mirabet, Elisabeth Roma, Horacio Fumero, and Juan Rodríguez Berbín among others.
Eleven songs, eleven soundtracks for small-big stories with a life of their own that make your skin crawl and make you smile little by little, like that unexpected and refreshing breeze that stops time after a hot summer day. Thus, these songs composed, recorded and produced by himself, make their way and illuminate every corner: From the catchy and playful melody that “Cross half the planet to find the peace of your cheeks” in the initial and shining “If life were only this”, teaming up with Alessio Arena, Lucía Fumero, Pol Batlle and a dazzling Rita Payés; to that oneiric Havana border that rocks us between waves and narrates over a slow fire the sinking of a ship in “We will see the algae dance”going through the previous and ultrasensory “One for there to be another”with an aftertaste of Jorge Drexler and some high-flying instrumental arrangements, as in the cheerful and contagious “Little sea star”with sounds back and forth under the wings.
There is no track that does not shine and gain in nuances, smells and flavors with each listen. In their own way, any one of these luminous odes to the little things—to what was, is, or could have been—could be a single from the album, a dewy musical beat, scented with sea and flowers, a flash of the magical eclecticity that tinkles in the private and collective firmament of “This cold is worth nothing”. Let yourself be cradled by the sway of that idle ranch healer, the most beautiful “I am that silly song” (with the heavenly choirs of Rita Payés and Lucía Fumero), may the aching beauty squeeze your chest “White-faced” or that, in the previous blink, “I want you to see”your pulse quickens and joy runs wildly through your veins, until it overflows in the chanted and addictive: “Don’t be afraid, it’s only time and the future is half blind”. And yes, there is still time to lose yourself and fall in love, there always is, with “Tio Pep” or with Silvia Pérez Cruz, giving us (once again and there are a thousand) an extra life in the interpretive nudity of “The little finger of the world“a theme that he signs and sings with an open heart, merging with Nico in the vibrant final stretch.
In closing they freeze and melt in “The sorrow” the hands of the clock, with the sound of “Silent Night” zigzagging between snowflakes that, no matter how hard they try, never erase the footprints of who you know… “Of love”, that is the hopeful mark that leaves us Nico Roig (along with the omnipresent sensibility of Lucía Fumero) on this acoustic record and latest electronic dance.
We are in March and it already seems “This cold is worthless” as one of the most pleasant delicacies of the year. You know, savor it before it gets cold, over and over again.