• LATIN

JORGE VILLAMIZAR

Jorge Villamizar

Warner Music Latina

***

Quietly heartbreaking, sharply humorous and ultimately, surprisingly hopeful, Jorge Villamizar's solo debut is the most personal music he has made.

Yes, some of the effervescent musicality and sweetness that characterized the songs he did with Bacilos is gone. But he compensates with a new emotional depth and lyrical complexity. These are songs you can listen to for a long, long time.

At first, regret and ambivalence seem to dominate. Villamizar apologizes to a departed lover and mourns her absence in Cómo vivir así (How to Live Like This) and Que más quisiera yo (What More Could I Want) and then wishes her well in Alma en libertad (Soul at Liberty). Just because he doesn't howl doesn't mean he isn't deeply wounded so much that any vision of love is compromised to the point of barely feeling like love at all. ''If it's my turn to start over again without you . . . what a drag,'' Villamizar sings in Que pereza (What a Drag). And yet there's hope in the self-acceptance of Espejo (Mirror) and even, somehow, in the longing that suffuses this whole album.

Musically, the CD feels a little flat -- the texture is subtle, and we don't hear much of Villamizar's gift for catchy melody. Producer Richard Blair adds little of the rhythmic drive that powers his own electronica/Colombian project Sidestepper. But there's a way in which the quietness of the music lets you focus more on the meaning, on the way Villamizar winds in on himself until he -- and we -- are staring directly into his heart.

-- JORDAN LEVIN

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