it’s an intriguingly progressive era in the pop genre, and for acts like Monsieur Job, buzz has been easy to come by. Over the past three years, the Colombian collective started by Toby Holguin has been raking in a lot of praise from fans, critics, and anyone who has a relationship with big beats and boundless harmonies. In their magnum opus, the seven-hour-plus W.T.F.! (which contains no less than 120 songs), a flag is planted in virtually every aesthetic under the sun, all in the name of establishing Monsieur Job as perhaps the definitive product of their contemporary scene.
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There’s a lot of jazz luster to be found in the heart of W.T.F.!’s “The Guiding Light,” “Capri,” “Problemas,” and the sophisticated “Changes,” but I think the same can be said for a remote rock n’ roll swagger that is never far from view in hip-hop works like “No Hay Nada Que Pueda Hacer” and “I See It in the Paper.” It takes a lot of confidence to pull a piece like this one together, and you don’t have to hear more than a tenth of this tracklist to appreciate the level of integrity and hard-earned cockiness Monsieur Job had in the studio here.
With no limits to hold them back artistically, these players produce indulgence (“Chiki Chiki Bau Wau,” “Like an Animal”) beside pristinely conservative arranging (“Ojala Sea Viernes – Roots Version,” “Morocha – Remix”) and experimental lyricism (“Tu Party,” “Fuck”) without sounding scattered in their approach. The electronic depth is particularly noticeable in a lot of this material, but at no point would I say Monsieur Job sound like they’re merely masters of the keyboard rather than genuine artists capable of dishing out some stone-cold musical wizardry when it’s more than appropriate to do as much.
To me, “Mighty High – Remix,” “Da Funk – Remix,” “Chinga Tu Madre,” and “Tu Te Pones a Jugar” are probably most representative of what this project can do when emotions and creative ambitions intersect in the studio, and based on what they’ve already created in the past, I don’t see any reason why Monsieur Job won’t continue to push the boundary as much as they can in the future. The recipe they’ve been following has been providing them nothing but love from the media and audiences around the world, and if I were in their position, I’d stick with what’s worked – and ultimately led to W.T.F.!.
Longtime listeners and newcomers to the Monsieur Job brand should get excited about what W.T.F.! is made of this September, and with every artistic base covered, there’s really no room for debating the credibility of this act any further. Monsieur Job’s success has been meteoric, and their momentum impossible to slow down, and with some additional exposure in North America I think their jazz-fueled approach to beats, clubby melodicism, and electronic composing is going to catch fire in a way a lot of pessimists would have never seen coming. They’re on every indie enthusiast’s radar right now, and for good reason indeed.
Rachel Townsend