It's a sad state of affairs when the best tracks on a disc are the ones where you feel most embarrassed for the performer. The love stories here are definitely of the Harlequin romance variety --
Mijares is solidly in the adult contemporary crooner mold.
Michael Bolton's fan base would feel at home here, with
Mijares' chest- and neck-straining vocal growls and plaintive declarations close-miked for every well-crafted catch in the voice, all set against the usual unmemorable background of keyboard presets and nylon guitars that Mexican industry producers have borrowed from American R&B for the past couple decades or so. The mind that seeks out this sort of accessibility tends to be despised or pitied by music critics when in fact it has probably shifted its cognitive reserves to activities which are more productive than music criticism, so one shouldn't judge the place of this music in the world too harshly. However, there is no escaping the essential cheapness of the product -- other than the voice, there is little to the ballads that couldn't be duplicated with a keyboard bought at a super store by a modestly talented teenager. Or maybe that's the point? As if to compensate for this,
Mijares alternates soft tracks with "hard" tracks, wherein he and his background chorus try to rock out. These aren't bad, although they're not going to keep Disney Channel bubblegum writers up at night. The singer is way out of his element, the low point being his shout of "I'm a Hoochie Coochie Man!" in heavily accented English during "Por Culpa de Quien?" But at least the instruments are real and there are catchy rock clichés that haven't dated too badly. ~ J. Chandler