Review of ‘Lux’: Rosalía breaks the seams of pop with an intense and engaging leap into the void | Culture | EUROtoday

Nobody noticed these two issues coming: Rosalía’s conversion from a slum motomami to the stainless nun, and that half the planet is presently listening to the chic violins of the London Symphony Orchestra, the sound structure on which it ascends Lux. Rosalía (Barcelona, ​​33 years previous) has 4 albums in her nonetheless brief profession, every delivering a unique journey: in Los Angeles (2017) gave herself to kind of main flamenco from the imaginative and prescient of a twenty-something and with the Spanish punk guitar of Refree; in The Bad Want (2018) contributed to the modernization of Spanish roots music to speak about dangerous love; in Motomami (2022) embraced the Caribbean and concrete enterprise traits, and now gives Lux, which has nothing to do with the above and should even collide together with his previous works. I smelled for her. To notice how radically stressed this artist is, it is sufficient to keep in mind that at first she was known as a “cantaora” after which she was absurdly accused of “cultural appropriation.” Where was that now… It is obvious that with Rosalía life is dizzying.

Lux, which he has labored on for 3 years, is accompanied by a media marketing campaign that portrays the signal of the occasions: an amazing digital and media noise, the conclusion that there are all the time cracks even in probably the most extreme planning and the way enjoyable this circus finally ends up being. An instance of this entertaining chaos is that this evaluation. It shouldn’t have been printed till Friday (album launch day) in response to the file firm’s promotional necessities, however as a consequence of leaks in the previous couple of hours (first a couple of songs, then your entire album), the corporate knowledgeable the media this afternoon that the monitor was free.

The strengths of Rosalía’s fourth and new work, Lux, There are many, however maybe the significance of the place from which it’s conceived must be put first. We are speaking a couple of daring, courageous, complicated, conceited and engaging work, an album with out choruses, with hardly any memorizable rhythms, dense and in depth. Let’s name it anti-commercial, however on the identical time it may be thought of pop. Rosalía does this from the head of pop music, from a place as a world star. Would it have been extra worthwhile to file a Desperate and likewise hold your organization’s managers completely happy? Obviously, sure. Making a uncommon album from the margins of the trade is far simpler, however placing collectively this mystical epic from the throne she occupies gives the picture of an artist with radical braveness.

Lux It goes to check the Catalan’s broad base of followers. There aren’t any business hooks to cling to right here. We are dealing with a sensory journey that goals to not be heard in items, which even suggests an intimate immersion of an hour with out distractions, with the cell phone in airplane mode and with out home interruptions. Some will fall by the wayside, and it is going to be a disgrace, as a result of it pays to at the very least take heed to it in these supply situations as soon as. Then, you’ll be able to snack, though there may be not a lot style on this discipline. Another of the weapons of Lux It is the vocal exhibition of the protagonist, overflowing, with steady inflections, expressing herself in operatic, flamenco or trapper codes and all the time displaying prodigious qualities.

The album is split into 4 acts, three fewer songs within the platform model. Other boutade of the artist: put the vinyl on prime as a substitute of the digital copy, which she is aware of effectively is the one which will likely be consumed probably the most. But there stays the gesture.

He would not invent something Lux. Everything it incorporates has been in operation for years: the lengthy albums, the conceptuality, the orchestral pop, the mix of languages, the seek for spirituality in artwork… But Rosalía faces it with a charming persona, capturing the listener’s consideration from the primary verses (“who could live between the two / first love the world and then love God”, from the tune Sex, violence and tires) and levitating him to the tip, Magnoliasthe place she evokes the demise of the protagonist and her fusion with God (or is she herself God?): “Gasoline, red wine, cigars and chocolate, we dance with love on top of my corpse.” When he sings Chocolate his voice turns to cuplé. It’s as if Concha Piquer appeared simply to say that phrase, chocolate. Prodigious. Perhaps those that lack the sensation of transcendence that the album proposes really feel a sure sensation of modest and even conservative discourse, and really presumably they’re proper. Here everybody chooses their path.

It’s not simply an orchestral album, though the prodigies of the London Symphony hardly relaxation. Lux It sounds trendy even when it resorts to traditional operatic ideas, as a result of right here and there they break with the orthodoxy of recent sounds, rapped sounds, digital noises and forays into flamenco, as in early within the morning o The rumba of forgiveness, with Estrella Morente and Silvia Pérez Cruz. There are three references within the work that not even the protagonist will deny: on the one hand, Björk (who participates within the preview Berghain) and Kate Bush, two ladies who’ve sublimated unusual and life-giving pop throughout mannequin careers; and, then again, Enrique Morente, the daring and dangerous singer from Granada.

As was the case with Motomami, Sometimes a sense of hodgepodge prevails, of together with too many issues with out inventive justification. An instance of this happens with the usage of as much as 13 languages, all intoned by the protagonist. This was already invented by one other colonizing singer, Julio Iglesias, who recorded his works in a number of languages ​​(even in Japanese), however whereas the target of the creator of life goes on the identical was the conquest of markets, in Lux It is offered to us as a story useful resource to make sense of the story. That is to say, if Rosalía has been impressed for a bit by the holy German abbess (in addition to a thinker and poet) Hildegard of Bingen, the logical factor for her is that that a part of the theme be expressed in German; and if in one other section the reference is the mystic and activist Simone Weil, effectively right here, you guessed it, French is used. Seeing how the polyglot frivolity matches into the album, it appears extra of a pretentious useful resource than the rest. “If I could, I would have sung in all the languages ​​of the world,” Rosalía stated this week in Mexico, and this assertion seemed like these maximalist proclamations of the aforementioned Julio Iglesias when he was increasing his musical area again within the mid-eighties.

With this work, Rosalía stands out brilliantly from the remainder of the pop stars of the second. Compare Lux With many albums that prime probably the most listened to lists, it’s like pretending that admiring the ocean is identical as a blue piece of cardboard. And permit me, in conclusion, to return to the tip of the critique of Motomami that this identical chronicler made: probably the most thrilling factor about Lux is that the following one will likely be a very totally different musical story.