Los Tres is the debut studio album by Chilean rock band Los Tres, released on September 4, 1991, through Alerce. The album contains ten songs, all produced by Carlos Necochea and written by the members of the band, mainly Álvaro Henríquez. The artwork for the cover is the painting "Actresses" by Georgian painter Lado Gudiashvili.
The project contains some of the band's most well known songs, such as "Un Amor Violento" and "He Barrido el Sol". The album is considered as one of the albums that reactivated Chilean rock during the early ninetees following a decade marked by pop music in the country.
American magazine Al Borde placed the album at number 151 in their list of 250 Most Important Albums of Iberoamerican Rock, released in 2006, being one of the three albums by the band to appear on the list. The Chilean edition of Rolling Stone included the album in their 50 Best Chilean Album list, released in 2008, placing it at number 20.
Background
The band began in 1982, with Álvaro Henríquez, Roberto "Titae" Lindl and Francisco "Pancho" Molina as the members while all three were attending to Charles de Gaulle School in Concepción, Chile, after going through several name changes as well as adding different members, the band finally became fully formed following the inclusion of Ángel Parra in 1988, staying with the name Los Tres ("The Three"), even through they were now a four-member band. In 1991, they released the album through the label Alerce, premiering it in a party at the restaurant Le Trianon in Santiago, while at first the album was mainly performed at college bars and pubs, it slowly began receiving attention, being supported by Chilean radio Rock & Pop, initially with the song "La Primera Vez", which allowed them to gradually enter the mainstream.
The album was recorded at Filmocentro Studios in Santiago and was produced in its entirely by Carlos Necochea. About naming the album with the name of the band, Henríquez said "I always felt that the album was a presentation of us, we were presenting ourselves to society". Following the success of the album, Jorge Melibosky from Sony Music approached the band to buy their contract with Alerce, the band accepted, allowing them to start expanding their career to international markets.
Composition
All of the song were written by Álvaro Henríquez, with Roberto Lindl having songwriting credits in "Sudapara", "Flores Secas", "La Primera Vez" and "Amores Incompletos", the latter song also credits Ángel Parra. Some of the songs were written while the band was still in Concepción, according to Francisco Molina, drummer of the band, the songs "El Haz Sensor", "En Jamaica", "Pájaros de Fuego" and "Flores Secas" were the first songs from the album to be written, saying "I remember some drafts of those songs while in Conce, we would play them a lot, there was also some idea of "Un Amor Violento" going around during that time".
The album starts with "Somos Tontos No Pesados" ("We Are Stupid Not Annoying"), which according to Henríquez was "a way to say who we were, a little warholian, but a way nonetheless". The song is followed by "El Haz Sensor" ("The Sensor Beam"), the name of the song is word play of the words "El Ascensor" ("The Elevator"), which in Spanish sounds like the title of the song. The next song is "Sudapara", a rockabilly song whose name is the words "Suda" ("Sweat") and "Para" ("For") written together, the name appears in the chorus and the ending of the song in lines such as "Suda para mí una vez más, cariño" ("Sweat for me once more, honey"), American rockabilly band Stray Cats served as inspiration for the sound of the song after Henríquez showed music from the band to Molina, sparking interest in them towards the genre.