Not even a year after the release of ‘Demian’, his debut album, Madrid-born Teo Planell announces the first details of his sequel, a work that will be released by Interscope Records and that has been recorded at El Royale, the studio he shares with Roy Borland in the mountains of Madrid and where friendly artists such as TRISTÁN, mori and Teo Lucadamo have also recorded.
Even without a known title, the album is presented with ‘Camila’, a new example of the extent to which Planell and all the artists associated with Russia IDK, directly or indirectly, go about their business.
Today’s Song Of The Day is a “brief ode to love,” according to the press release, but it’s more than that. To begin with, we are faced with a vintage ballad, with echoes of jazz and blues and choruses typical of vocal groups from the 40s, such as Southern Sons. A musical style so remote that it doesn’t really seem viable in current pop. Planell thinks otherwise, perhaps aware that songs like ‘Dreams’, by the Pied Pipers, have found their place on TikTok in an unusual way.
Drums played with brushes, what sounds like a very subtle double bass, and careful brass arrangements dress up a beautiful melody that, as if inspired by the soundtracks of Disney movies from the 1930s, includes the magic of a flute, as if it were Tinkerbell, from ‘Peter Pan’, spreading glitter over the song. But the vocal harmonies are, without a doubt, the true protagonists.
‘Camila’ unfolds slowly and patiently, and the instrumentation almost drowns out Planell’s voice, who sings in love about a girl he can’t stop watching. Setting the song in the present, Planell sings about a person who “shimmers like an apparition between video cameras.” Just when the rhythm “stretches up” and the song begins to pick up steam, it decides to end abruptly, leaving the feeling that the next one is about to begin.
