album rating: ★★★★☆
Genre: Post-punk / new wave / Movida Madrileña / rock torero (embryonic). Que Dios Reparta Suerte ('May God Deal Out Luck') is the debut studio album by Gabinete Caligari, a Madrid-based trio formed in 1981 whose members were Jaime Urrutia (vocals and guitar, formerly of Ejecutivos Agresivos), Fernando 'Ferni' Presas (bass) and Eduardo 'Edi' Clavo (drums), both formerly of Ella y los Neumáticos. The album was recorded in Madrid in September 1983, produced by Ángel Altolaguirre and engineered by Jesús Gómez, and released on the label Tres Cipreses, edited by DRO S.L. (catalogue 3C-104). The group took its name from the 1920 German Expressionist film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari — a deliberate statement of their interest in the darker, more theatrical currents of European culture. The band had made its debut in 1981 on a four-track shared EP alongside Parálisis Permanente, a group with whom they shared an aesthetic and social world and whose singer Eduardo Benavente was a significant influence. That debut track, 'Golpes' — a deliciously morbid sado-masochistic love story — established the band's persona and drew the attention of the young Madrileño audience. A preceding EP, Obediencia (Tres Cipreses, 1982), had consolidated their reputation. Que Dios Reparta Suerte deepens and complicates the picture: it is a record rooted in British post-punk and the darkness of the early 1980s New Wave, but it is also unmistakably Spanish — and specifically Madrileño — in its subject matter and references. The album makes use of flamenco elements, pasodoble rhythms and imagery from the bullfight alongside synthesiser textures and angular post-punk guitars, in what would later be christened rock torero. Guest musician Teresa Verdera contributes keyboards, piano, organ and castanets. The tracklist's ten songs include the opening 'Sangre Española' (Spanish Blood), the title track 'Que Dios reparta suerte', and 'Héroes de la Unión Soviética' (Heroes of the Soviet Union). All music was written by Jaime Urrutia; the track 'El arte de amar' (B5) has lyrics by Jaime and music by Ana Curra. The album is dedicated to the cultural ferment of the Movida Madrileña — the explosion of creative energy that followed Spain's transition to democracy after the death of Franco in 1975, centred on Madrid and involving music, film, fashion and visual art.
Label: Tres Cipreses / DRO S.L. (Madrid), 1983. Catalogue: 3C-104.
Producer: Ángel Altolaguirre. Engineer: Jesús Gómez. Guest musician: Teresa Verdera (keyboards, piano, organ, castanets).
Recording studio: Recorded in Madrid, September 1983.
Critical reception: Que Dios Reparta Suerte was received as a significant statement within the Movida Madrileña and the post-punk scene. The Internet Archive radio programme on Gabinete Caligari describes it as making clear 'not only that it was a rock record but a Rock Español record — with a capital R and a capital E — that in addition to punk, incorporated rhythms like the pasodoble, with lyrics that claimed subjects as controversial as the bullfight.' The most-cited standout tracks are 'Sangre Española', 'Que Dios reparta suerte' and 'Héroes de la Unión Soviética'. The El Bus Más Rock-Pop biography notes that after the relative commercial failure of this first album, the band changed style and mixed pop rock with música castiza, developing what became known as rock torero — a style of which they would become the leading exponents.
Commercial success: The debut album sold modestly. It was with the second album, Cuatro Rosas (DRO/Tres Cipreses, 1985), that Gabinete Caligari began to consolidate a wide following. Al calor del amor en un bar (DRO/Tres Cipreses, 1986), their third album, produced their greatest hits — 'Al calor del amor en un bar', 'Cuatro rosas', 'Camino Soria' and 'La culpa fue del cha-cha-cha' — and made them one of the most popular Spanish rock acts of the era. A major-label deal with EMI followed. Their greatest-hits compilation was released by EMI in 1993; reissues and further compilations have followed, and the Que Dios Reparta Suerte album is now retrospectively recognised as the beginning of one of the Movida's most distinctive artistic trajectories.
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