"Skin de Sol" begins with one of the least expected "rock" arrangements of its context, percussion being what sounds like a light echoed clatter, high vocals intertwining over a soft blend of distant electric guitar and up-front acoustics, all while being as immediate and memorable an arrangement as one could want. It's a good way to balance out the off-kilter and the familiar, and the rest of
Que Amors Que proceeds to live up to that promise. "On the Beach" -- neither a
Neil Young nor a
Chameleons cover -- settles into a more familiar vibe in ways while the distanced vocals continue to provide an air of strangeness, a distant haziness that may frustrate some listeners wanting more concreteness in their lyrics but which works as illustrative air, guitars and organs all flowing into each other behind the clearer beats. Often the feeling is of a more zoned-out and distanced take on the similarly quiet parts of
Ghost's ouevre, with a key difference between
Batoh's contemplative but clear considerations in the Japanese band's work and the essentially unintelligible lyrics by the band here. "Loneliest Person" provides one of the quickest -- and in ways, clearest -- songs on the album, as if the brevity means a sudden concentration of effort all around in both hooks and intended meaning, something slightly echoed later on "Swelling Moon," which also has a quick and quite fun light funk keyboard break...and why not include an easygoing left-field curve, after all? "Ocean Samba" ends on just that note, very nicely, summing up a softly engaging listen.