Lo Que Siempre Soñamos Ser captures Mario Sandoval’s unique sound that made his former group so popular
In 2007 when the duo, Lu, disbanded; Paty Cantu went off in her own direction and Mario Sandoval took the duo’s sound and made it his own. He formed Sandoval, which is his music with the help of some friends. Now what Sandoval started as and what it turned out to be is completely different. Sandoval promoted themselves as a group for the first album and then the group’s second live album. Much after then, Mario decided to use just his last name and now Sandoval is just Mario doing Mario’s music.
When I first listened to Lo Que Siempre Soñamos Ser, I heard Lu. That is because Mario wrote all of Lu’s music, so the sound is completely his. That is a good thing for Lu fans. I was not a huge fan of Lu because I didn’t like the combination of Paty and Mario; but with Sandoval’s debut album, fans get to hear the voice of Susana Ortiz being the girl counterpart for Mario Sandoval. I don’t think Mario necessarily needs a girl sidekick to be relevant in music because he has a decent voice, and you can hear this in his new singles that he has been releasing on streaming services.
Other members of the band found on this album are Enrique Lopez on bass and Alejandro Vazquez on the drums, most of the other instruments are all handled by Mario. Minus the Susana, I don’t hear much difference between Lu and Sandoval, which I guess I would have liked to hear something musically different but I guess you can’t change a sound that belongs to a young man who has been writing songs since the age of six.
The album falls in a more adult contemporary category where pop music tends to be geared to a late 20’s crowd, though I think the younger audiences can find the track, “Quiero” to be hip enough to fall in that youthful crowd. The music is consistent throughout the album making a good flow in between tracks. The group sounds great together for the most part and with this consistency, I could see them becoming the next Presuntos Implicados. But see that Mario is promoting himself only lately as Sandoval, it is hard to tell if the band part is done or not.
Since that day, I have been study Latin pop and rock music and have become a Latin pop music historian through the publishing of articles, fanzine, and websites. My goal is to teach people about Latin pop music and the history behind it with my website, Siempre En Domingo.
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