Sencillos

In many ways, Spain's place in the twee indie pop world is due entirely to the late great La Buena Vida. Active from 1988 to 2003 and originally strongly influenced by the U.K. C-86 explosion of endearingly amateurish guitar pop bands, La Buena Vida actually progressed further stylistically than many of the bands that inspired them. By the end of their career, bits of bossa nova, St. Etienne-style electro-dance, and the continental Europop of the '60s and '70s, from Françoise Hardy to ABBA, could be found in their increasingly elegant music. Despite their admirable insistence on sticking to their native tongue (except on the occasional English-language cover, as on this box set's takes on the Velvet Underground's "Candy Says" and the Beatles' "Here, There and Everywhere"), La Buena Vida are the archetypal indie band of the '90s, and anyone with a more than passing interest in folks like Heavenly, Velocity Girl, and the Softies is strongly encouraged to check out their oeuvre. That exploration became considerably easier with the release of the five-disc box set Sencillos, which gathers all four of the band's stand-alone EPs, released between 1992 and 2000 and now long out of print and commanding collector-geek prices, and adds a handful of rare non-LP bonus tracks to sweeten the deal. These 25 songs could have easily fit on a single disc (in keeping with the C-86 ethos, most of La Buena Vida's early songs were over and out somewhere around 90 seconds), but the elaborate packaging is in keeping with the fetishization of the single and EP that were part of that scene, and it's true that the sugar-pop charms of tunes like "Historia de un Verano" and "Velomar," with its breezy "bum-bum-bum-bum" chorus, are best appreciated a few at a time. Overall, however, Sencillos is basically essential, and among other positives is a strong argument for the ranking of lead singer Irantzu Valencia alongside Pam Berry, Rose Melberg, and Amelia Fletcher as one of the great female vocalists of twee pop.