Born in Monterey, Mexico, Marcela Bovio is best known for her involvement in several Arjen A projects. Lucassen as Ayreon and especially Stream Of Passion of which she was the lead singer from 2005 to 2014. His first solo album in 2016 ("Unprecedented") went rather unnoticed. Marcela Bovio's talent deserves better, and this review is there to fix this anomaly.
Far from the symphonic progressive metal standards where we had left the Mexican soprano, "Through Your Eyes" is a very intimate album through which Marcela lets her talent as a singer but also her writing and composition skills explode. The acoustic orchestration gives pride of place to the piano and to the delicate string arrangements on which the clear voice of the beautiful Latin woman shines.
It is in a register quite close of Anneke Van Giersbergen that she mostly works on sharp compositions. If the tonalities are quite similar indeed, the style is also in the same register, reminiscent of Anneke's album "Pure Air". Like her mate, Marcela has a gift for magnifying melodies and her pure voice uses singing tones that tell us a story with each note. The melodies are brilliant and the high-pitched vocals are tinged with an enveloping softness, as shown in the excerpt at the bottom of this page.
Only a few tracks deviate from this pattern like "Magic Powers" in a classical jazz of the best effect. Let's also note 'Thorns And Roses' and 'Desde Adentro' sung in Spanish, Marcela's mother tongue, giving even more relief to an already very expressive song. Finally, 'The Silence Before The Storm' benefits from an evolutionary construction, rising in intensity to end in apotheosis with a more intense symphonic orchestration and a high-pitched song that seems limitless. A construction that reminds us of the elucubrations of the Dutch giant with whom she has long worked and which would almost make us regret not hearing some heavy riffs and rhythms.
By defining her work as melancholic chamber music, Marcela Bovio does not seek to use her notoriety to deceive her audience. On the contrary, she displays colour and relies on her talents to win over an audience that is sensitive to hushed atmospheres. For this purpose, she relies on finely chiselled compositions and a pure voice of icy beauty. Fans of guitars and wild rhythms, go your way, this acoustic album is worth more for its melancholic ambiences and the exceptional voice of its singer and will undoubtedly please Anneke's fans, even if it would be simplistic to stop at this comparison as this "Through Your Eyes" is much more than that.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator