Music for a New Dawn

LIKE french fries with Salsa Lizano, Kadeho’s second album, ‘Hasta que Vuelva a Amanecer,’ (Until Dawn Breaks Again) is something familiar with a Costa Rican flavor. This might be a disk for those who miss the pop-alternative rock of the mid-1990s but don’t want to sacrifice the influence a town like the Pacific port of Puntarenas has on the music scene.

The latest, released this year, two years after their first, features the lyrics and properly jaded voice of lead singer and songwriter Jorge Zumbado. Though most of the songs do not steer from love themes, the words are one of their most original aspects. The title song, driven by melancholy guitar chords that verge on a reggae beat, deals with underdevelopment in Costa Rica.

ZUMBADO wrote one of the songs, ‘Fantasmas,’ (Ghosts) the day before the group recorded it. The base line recalls Johnny Cash’s rougher tunes and the guitar strikes some of those same minor notes that sharpen the edge of the alt-rock sound. ‘Tanto Tu y Yo’ (Both You and I) begins with a tough guitar riff and some feedback then relaxes during the poetic vocals, but the toughness rebounds for the instrumental chorus and finale.

‘Vivo Volando’ (Living in flight) sounds like a teenybopper tune with an edgy guitar, but one of the most unusual songs on the album is the last, ‘El Soldado Enamorado’ (The Soldier in Love). It is a genre-crossing conglomerate of musical sections, some featuring a slow reggae-like guitar and others a surprising horn section, all reigned in with Zumbado’s mood-dampening voice. The song is a response to the war in Iraq that casts the soldier as a sensitive lover who left his sweetheart behind to defend his country.

ACCORDING to Zumbado, the name of the album was derived from an experience in his hometown Puntarenas.

“Every time we were in Puntarenas we waited until the bars closed and got together in a park on the Paseo de Los Turistas that we called JurassicPark to wait for the dawn to break. It was an extraordinary experience to see how the sun rose in the morning. When we finally went to sleep we looked forward to going out again at night until the sun rose the next day. It’s like a cycle.”

Hasta Que Vuelva a Amanecer is available in music stores around the country and its label, DDM, plans to export it at a later date.