El Otro Yo

EL OTRO YO
COLMENA
BESOTICO

There are many reasons to resent Argentine band El Otro Yo and their as-addictive-as-chocolate weirdo pop punk: how they make you feel like a gnome with their pretty-people physicality, that they write intensely inventive three-minute tales with the ease of a Tin Pan Alley tunesmith, the fact that they've been doing this since they were teens. But can you really despise a group that cheerily declares, "We're singing to the people who live on the streets!/They're so cold!/Covered only by cardboard boxes!/They're killing us!" then ends the number with gunshot blasts? ¡Nunca! The to-the-streets tune "Calles" is just one of the bevy of bizarre beauties on the band's latest, Colmena. A bit more accessible than their 2000 electro-nuts must-own Abrecaminos, Colmenathankfully still finds the quartet—drummer Raimundo Fajardo, keyboardist Ezequiel Araujo, and dueling siblings Humberto and María Aldana on guitar and bass, respectively—combining paper-shredder six-string chops, drum pounds that mimic the pots banged by protestors on Argentina's chaotic streets (which they excerpt on "Calles"), and haphazard synthesizer swoons into rock at its face-punching best. Most interesting, though, are El Otro Yo's vocal switches between the howls of Humberto and his sis' sweet voice. Sometimes, Humberto screams like a Dirty War-era prisoner while María backs him with celestial sighs; on other tracks such as "Virus," María unleashes a coo somewhere between Kathleen Hanna and Gwen Stefani while Humberto injects his larynx with estrogen. With this back-and-forth craziness fronting their mondo music, Colmena should eliminate any ill will jag-offs might hold against the cutthroat cuties.