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Reviews

Rafael Riqueni — Versatae
(Cleopatra no#, 2024, CD)

by Jon Davis, Published 2024-03-06

Versatae Cover art

I’ll be very direct here, and perhaps expose a little too much about how this kind of sausage (a music review) is made, at least in my case. I get dozens of promotional albums a week, the majority of which are in download form and come unsolicited. There are way too many for me to write about, and many of them are not in the core styles that we cover on this website. That means that many of the downloads get discarded after an initial listen. But if an artist, label, or PR person goes to the trouble of sending a CD, I regard it as an obligation to write a review. There are very few promo CDs I’ve received over the years that I’ve bailed on. When I got the announcement of a new album by a flamenco master covering a bunch of pop tunes, I was curious enough to download it, but within a few seconds of starting the first track, I knew it was a bust. The player had obvious skill, but he was doing something I found really boring. I mean, really, I would be fine never hearing “Tears in Heaven” again in any form for the rest of my life. I know lots of people must love the song — it was a big hit after all — but I’ve never been a fan. But then one day a CD arrived in the mail of the album, so here we are. Rafael Riqueni had apparently been away from the music scene for a while when he released Parque de Maria Luisa in 2017, and Versatae is the third album of his revived career. In addition to the previously mentioned song, he gives us versions of “Europa” (Santana), “Just the Two of Us” (Grover Washington Jr. with Bill Withers), “Dream On” (Aerosmith), “Stairway to Heaven” (Led Zeppelin), “I Will Always Love You” (Dolly Parton or Whitney Houston), “Every Breath You Take” (The Police), and a few other well-known pieces like “Moon River,” “What a Wonderful World,” and Ennio Morricone’s theme to Cinema Paradiso. For listeners who love the sound of a well-played acoustic guitar, the album might have some appeal, but I can’t get over the banality of the source material. If I went to a guitar concert, and Riqueni played a bunch of original or flamenco pieces, then threw in one of these, I’d find it amusing, but a whole album of it makes me want to leave the room. There you go, a sort of Contractual Obligation Review.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Rafael Riqueni

More info
http://cleopatrarecords.bandcamp.com/album/versatae

 

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