Humo y Espejos

The Spanish indie pop duo La Monja Enana were together for just over a decade before their first full-length album, Humo y Espejos, came out on Elefant in 2008. A lot happened in those ten years — notably, vocalist Ana married Felipe (formerly of Los Fresones Rebeldes) and helped him form the sparkling indie pop outfit Cola Jet Set. Those who are familiar with Ana's work with that group will probably be pretty surprised to hear her work with La Monja Enana; the duo's icy, robotic aesthetic is essentially the polar opposite of Cola Jet Set's bouncy, sunny repertoire. And based on this disc alone, you could say she really is best suited to singing sunny, whimsical material. La Monja Enana's cover of Jonathan Richman's "I'm a Little Dinosaur," offered up as a bonus track, is one of the album's best moments, if only because Ana's tiny, spunky voice sounds right at home with all those winsome blips and beeps. The same goes for "Cancion de Amor No. 3" and "Trucos de Salon" — they're light and airy, with just enough frost to keep things interesting, and they're lush with Italian disco and new wave references. It's the kind of thing that brings to mind Sally Shapiro, Sambassadeur, and Friday Bridge. As sexy, chic, and just plain smart (literary allusions abound on this album) as Humo y Espejos might be when it comes to these tracks, the disc as a whole is undermined by its decidedly one-dimensional production values; the album sounds homogeneously tinny and dry, with very little bass or wetness to shake things up, and as a result, it feels a tad flat. Humo y Espejos is passable at best, but fans of this genre might be better served by digging into Sally Shapiro's (or better yet, Altered Images') discography instead.