Meridian Brothers & El Grupo Renacimiento is true. It is a verifiable certainty. It is also an elaborate fiction. A fiction, that tells a faithful story cut with genuine feeling and affection. Swelling with an affinity for people who never existed, but whose narrative plays out in the waking experience of everyday people. A myth marbled with history. Out of this enigma hatches the latest offering from celebrated Columbian songwriter, singer, and one-man orchestra, Eblis Álvarez. Eblis often plays on his own as the Meridian Brothers, but this time he has teamed up with El Grupo Renacimient in order to revive the latter's lost classics. Classics that Eblis has specifically written and performed for this collaboration. Did you catch that? Alright, I'll clarify. Eblis is playing on this record as both the Meridian Brothers (a band that he is the only consistent member of) and another band that he created, El Grupo Renacimiento (another group that is the only real member of) and he has written an extensive catalog the second in the style of a '70s salsa band. In embarking on this charade, he is toying with a familiar narrative; a critical darling in the present paying their dues by helping a band that inspired them, but who never met with the success they deserved, put out one last record- only there is no unsung hero, and no accolade adorn upstart, there is just one guy whose is obsessed with salsa music pretending to be two bands. Part of Eblis's plan in intentionally blurring the barriers between fact and fable appears to be the granting of himself the license to perform music from the salsa's golden era with an outlandish, parodic flare, while still maintaining the kind of veracity that you might expect from a skilled journalist or a professional documentary maker. He wants it both ways, to be both jester and court historian, and for the worth of my judgment, he's largely succeeding. My Spanish is terrible, but even with my limited comprehension, I can easily pick up on the incisive humor of this record, as well as the brutal realities that its addresses, both textually and subtextually, such as police brutality, the struggles of poverty, slow suicides by addiction, personal and professional degradation and failure, and the overriding power and hope of redemption. Eblis makes a mockery of our demands for fidelity while substituting something unadulterated and contortedly authentic in its stead. Like all great records, you don't have to know the truth behind Meridian Brothers & El Grupo Renacimiento to recognize it as being real. Its truth is in how it makes you feel; if it feels real, it is real.
