Sudestada

"Sudestada" finds Gustavo Cerati in his post-Soda Stereo solo mastery, painting weather as inner state. Named for the sudestada — the cold southeasterly storm that lashes the Río de la Plata and floods Buenos Aires — the track is moody, layered electronic rock, all atmosphere and undertow. Cerati builds it from washes of treated guitar, looped textures, a pulse that broods rather than drives; you can hear the meticulous studio craftsman who treated the album as a sonic landscape. His baritone is cool, intimate, slightly weary, gliding over the arrangement with the elegance that made him Latin rock's great aesthete. The lyric uses the storm as metaphor — a relationship or a mood charged with low pressure, something approaching that you can feel in the air before it arrives, dread and anticipation braided together. Emotionally it lives in melancholy suspension, that grey hour when the sky goes heavy and you wait for it to break. Culturally Cerati was the architect of sophisticated Argentine rock, and tracks like this show his absorption of trip-hop and Britpop textures into something distinctly porteño. Best heard with headphones on a genuinely overcast day, watching rain gather over the city, letting the song's slow gathering match the weather outside your window.