''Salvavidas de Hielo'' (English: ''Ice Life Jackets'') is the eleventh studio album by Uruguayan singer and songwriter Jorge Drexler, released on September 22, 2017, through

Warner Music Warner Music Group Corp. ( d.b.a. Warner Music Group, commonly abbreviated as WMG) is an American multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It is one of the " big three" recording companies and th ...

. It was produced by Carles Campón, frequent collaborator of Drexler, and features collaborations with Chilean singer

Mon Laferte Norma Monserrat Bustamante Laferte (born 2 May 1983) is a Chilean musician, singer, composer and painter. She is known for her musical versatility, having composed songs in a wide variety of genres such as pop, rock, bolero, cumbia and salsa. In ...

and Mexican singers Julieta Venegas and

Natalia Lafourcade María Natalia Lafourcade Silva (; born 26 February 1984) is a Mexican pop-rock and folk singer and songwriter who, since her debut in 2002, has been one of the most successful singers in Latin America. Lafourcade's voice has been categorized a ...

, the latter in the title track. At the 19th Annual Latin Grammy Awards, the album was nominated for Album of the Year, Best Engineered Album and won Best Singer-Songwriter Album while the song "Telefonía" won both Song of the Year and

Record of the Year The Grammy Award for Record of the Year is presented by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to "honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without reg ...

. The album was also nominated for Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album at the

60th Annual Grammy Awards The 60th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony was held on January 28, 2018. The CBS network broadcast the show live from Madison Square Garden in New York City. The show was moved to January to avoid coinciding with the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeong ...

Background

The album was recorded in both

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital city, capital and primate city, largest city of Mexico, and the List of North American cities by population, most populous city in North Amer ...

and

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

, the name of the album and also of the eleventh track comes from the idea of an ice life vest that, even if it's doomed to melt it's still helpful, according to Drexler, "it is a hommage to the ephemeral, to the things that, even if they are not eternal, are very important to people and keep them afloat, not everything that makes us endure life last long, sometimes the very brief things leave a big mark". The album marked a shift towards a more acoustic approach, using mainly guitars and vocals, different from his previous effort, '' Bailar en la Cueva''. Drexler draw inspirations from the countries where he recorded the album, the song "Pongamos que hablo de Martinez" ("Let's Say I Talk About Martinez") is dedicated to Spanish singer

Joaquín Sabina Joaquín Ramón Martínez Sabina (born 12 February 1949) is a Spanish musician, singer, composer, and poet. His songs usually treat about love, heartbreaks and society with a large usage of literary figures similarly to the baroque-literature st ...

, whose first surname is Martinez, while the music video for the song "Movimiento" ("Movement") features Lorena Ramírez, a Mexican

Rarámuri The Rarámuri or Tarahumara is a group of indigenous people of the Americas living in the state of Chihuahua in Mexico. They are renowned for their long-distance running ability. Originally, inhabitants of much of Chihuahua, the Rarámuri re ...

woman who won a hundred kilometres marathon wearing only sandals and traditional clothing, whose story led Drexler to ask director Lorenzo Hagerman, to contact her and ask her to appear in the video.

Critical reception

Mariano Prunes from ''

Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...

'' gave the album three and a half stars out of five, writing that while the album was a "quintessential Jorge Drexler album", at times the music "feels smothered by the weight of its own weightlessness", he also commented on the features in the album writing that they "add a much welcome vocal counterbalance and easily become the album's highlights". Neil Spencer from ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' rated the album three stars out of five calling it "gentle but classy".

Track listing

All tracks were produced by Carles Campón.

Charts

References

{{reflist, 2 2017 albums Jorge Drexler albums