Tin Corazón
On Tin Corazón wandering bass, keening pedal steel, martial percussion forms a foundation over which Delgado’s dusky vocals glide like swallows greeting twilight. It is flecked with post-punk grit, drenched in reverb and mesquite smoke. Dubbed “Dark Desert Swoon”, Tin Corazón is expansive, haunting, and undeniably engaging.
The tale of Delgado begins at age twenty, our native New Mexican newly arrived in Chicago with $20 in his pocket, a Fender Mustang, and couches to surf. He cut his teeth playing solo acoustic shows in the best of the worst bars, from sleazy dives to the back room of a filthy taqueria in Wicker Park. After building a hard-won career playing in shoegaze and punk bands around the Chicago scene and touring regionally, it was soon once again time to head the call of the wandering spirit. Delgado recalls, “I gave myself until I was 33 years old to try and build a career as a musician in Chicago. After that, I figured that it was time to cut my losses.”
Delgado headed east, attending design school in Detroit. After a decade in the Motor City, he once again pulled stakes. “I was going through a painful break-up and had to lay my cat to rest on the same day I moved into my own apartment” he tells. “I moved to California a few months later, and it just went from bad to worse. The stress of that situation just wasn’t allowing me to process all the changes and heartache. That’s when the music just started flowing out of me. And from that moment forward, I just kept on writing to exorcise the demons.”
What resulted was Tin Corazón, Delgado’s first release after ten years of silence. The songs on Tin Corazón were born from heartache, regret, anger, salvation, and everything in between. The more he wrote, the more the songs touched on modern social issues. “I think the isolation of these times forces us to stop and take deeper notice of our immediate surroundings, and that includes trying to understand our place in the world” Delgado explains.
Tracked remotely across four states during the pandemic with his band, Los Conejos De Amor (The Rabbits of Love), Tin Corazón was arranged, produced and mixed by Jason Davis at Off The Cuff Sound. The two had first come together when Davis had tracked a demo for Delgado’s band Toro, Toro, Toro!!!. They clicked and knew they would work together again. In late 2019 they reconnected, and Delgado started sending Davis demos.
“As we’ve grown more comfortable working together, I spend less time sweating the fine details early on and just send over a rough idea” tells Delgado. “In this way, the instrumentation has become a bit more stream of consciousness. Instead of trying to control the wild horse, we just jump on and let the ride take us wherever we end up.”
In production, they focused more on the vibe of a take rather than chasing perfection. “It’s the first time I let go of the reins and stopped being overbearing about direction. I just kind of pointed us in a direction and let it happen.” Combining Delgado’s surf guitar tones and the pervasive atmospherics drawn from his shoegaze days, Tin Corazón breathes deeply of his New Mexican roots. The traditional Mariachi 1950s Rock n’ Roll and the country-western music that soundtracked his youth echo throughout the record. In essence, “These songs are a return to a life of music I thought I lost. And I don’t take that lightly.”
So, we have Tin Corazón, an immersive work of art that draws you in like a great work of prose - and satisfies such the same. Give yourself over to Delgado, for it is a broad and deeply human journey through which he guides us.