Víctor Aneiros Finds his Lost Bullet
By Eduardo Galán

Lamentations are common anywhere in the world and establish solid relationships among unknown cultures, said an African poet, father of the theory of blackness. In this way, the blues sung in Galician makes all the sense in the world. And it seems to mean much more when transmitted through the voice and guitar of Víctor Aneiros.

Víctor´s new album provides another opportunity for black music with a Galician soul. It is surely the best of the four albums produced up till now by the Ferrol musician, as it remains coherent from start to finish. A certain melancholy pervades each guitar riff, each sung verse. It is created with the raw material of our Galician essence: rain and tears. Like a liquid bullet, to live and to die, lost and found.
Over Secret Hero glides a racial mix without prejudice, a natural fusion of tradition and modernity, jazz, rock and even some funk, strung like beads on the backbone of the blues. The lyrics taken by Víctor from newspaper articles jive side by side with those from our classic poets: Rosalía de Castro, Luis Pimentel, Luis Amado Carballo , or Curros Enriquez, as well as contemporary authors, such as Ramiro Fonte.
The Galician cold embraces and winter is a dagger. The wind whistles, dragging dead leaves. The main characters of the stories are the uprooted, emigrants, urban losers who live in the bars and nights of ghettos, switching off the moon, searching the streets of any seaport for a corner where they can be happy, even momentarily.
There are certain magic islands, songs dotting the sea of desolation which Secret Hero represents, such as Árbores e lume,( Trees and Fire), a surrealistic piece displaying a rare sense of humour. With lyrics by Fuco Nadales, a musician who has worked with Victor in the past, and rescued from the eighties, Trees and Fire can be reinterpreted as an unsynchronized hallucination in which the children who play in a park are “ diaños”, or demons of life, in the waking hours of a morning hangover. In this writer´s opinion, the song undoubtedly contains some of the most ingenious and evocative lyrics in the history of Galician music.

The distorted guitar flows, following an erratic wandering path; its moody sounds are by times haunting sighs, but also strikes of fury; docile showers with the national guitar and slide which slip smoothly over the unplugged guitar in Soia ,( Alone) or in Canzón pra que un neno non durma,( Song so that a child will not sleep), yet they can also become the distorted torrential rainfall in Miña bala perdida,( My lost bullet ) or Iago.

In certain guitar licks one finds hints of Victor´s old friends or masters, especially Rory Gallagher and his Calling Card or Jimi Hendrix, as evoked by gusts of melody reminding one of Crosstown Traffic or Spanish Castle Magic.
All of this is placed solidly upon the powerful foundation provided by Victor´s usual musicians: Marcos Sánchez on drums and Xacobe Martínez on base guitar and acoustic base. The frank wisdom of Manolo Gutiérrez´s piano dialogue provides salty drops which flavour the guitar line.
To sum up, in our opinion this is the CD of the year. You will find in it a selection of tiny masterpieces, of which our personal choice might spotlight the authentic setting of night landscapes in Na Barra,( At the Bar ) ,as well as Solpor,( Sunset) , the most optimistic track on the album, which could be defined as an electric lullaby and certainly a potential commercial hit, perhaps a future Number One on the charts, a hymn with a catchy chorus which speaks of a dying sun.

Last but not least, one mustn´t forget the new version of Unha noite na eira do trigo,( A Night in the Wheat Silo), with the marvellous black voice of Paula Martins. Victor and Paula should continue this magnificent collaboration. Why not a possible future album together, hand in hand?