They say that if you lift a tile in Montevideo, you’ll find a musician underneath. I don’t know if this is just a common expression, I cannot prove it empirically, and nor do I care. What is true is that, for better or worse, it’s a fairly musical city. The diversity of genres (and the imposition of genres) can be felt on the street: you get on the bus and the driver is blasting cumbia or international sentimental; teenagers invade shopping malls with reggaeton sounding from their phones; Gardel sings from the radio the kiosk owner hangs from his stall; during summer bands play on the street; on Sunday it’s drums; and the most sophisticated Anglo-Saxon pop comes out of the bars I know best, or local bands play. In all that mix, some of us choose to aim our ears outward, investigate the catalog of an independent Portland label before giving a local musician a shot (a bit because we’re snobs, a bit because the grass is always greener). And that attitude of looking outward, far away, is repeated with film, literature, TV… There’s the need to stay updated, to know what goes on out there, to consume culture from the other side. In my case it’s more of a habit; I randomly grew up listening to Anglo-Saxon bands and my ear got formed that way and used to it. I can get goose bumps listening to a guitar recorded in California but understand nothing when a bongo or tamboril sounds. In any case, every once in a while there’s a song, a musician or a band that manages to break the spell and bring me back.





I’m writing a story. The setting is Montevideo, and the characters are in their early twenties. When I write I usually play background music, because I convinced myself it helps me find the tone for every chapter, it flows better. When I think of the city I want to portray, of the characters, albums such as “69 love songs” by Magnetic Fields, or “Tigermilk” by Belle and Sebastian, come up. But since the city I’m speaking about is my own, and since I want it to feel like I see it, more than once I’ve played the album “Canciones de Irma y Julio” by Mersey, my favorite Uruguayan band for some years now.




Everything began the night I saw Franny Class (Gonzalo Deniz) in the basement of Living. There I got carried away with their songs like a teenager would, with their first album, and then the arrow struck me again with their other project, Mersey, in a natural way. I finally felt that the city I was living in had a sound which fit it like a glove, or at least it was the glove I was waiting to find. For me, Mersey has that perfect combination, of being from Montevideo and having grown up listening to a good dose of foreign music. They don’t sound pretentious but rather dedicated, and their songs make me want to hug them. They’re like the cousins of Fernando Cabrera, thanks to the cadence, thanks to that thing that drives them to be contemplative with asphalt, thanks to the melancholy –which in them is sweeter and less dangerous–. And there’s the humor. Those lines that come up in the moments you’d least expect and make you smile every time you listen to them. They don’t fall into the common qualities and poses of rock; these guys are not ashamed to be soft, sensitive, to have female friends.




I listened to “Canciones de Irma y Julio” until I was sick of it. It took me through romantic relationships, sunburnt vacations, full moon nights, packed bus trips, hours of work and writing. It’s a conceptual album that traverses the comings and goings of its two characters, and oh how random, I once heard them say that the “69 love songs” was somewhat of an influence. And it’s still on my computer, showing up behind the Word file, reminding me that the best sounding band in a city is not the one that speaks of it the most, but the one that best captures it in a particular moment.

PS: download the album at www.merseybanda.com