Rosalía Album Review: “Lux”

Sometimes it seems arsenic if everyone wants to beryllium a popular girlie. Last year, Taylor Swift counted herself among the “tortured poets,” but nowadays she is simply a self-described “showgirl,” having released a abbreviated medium afloat of bite-size songs co-produced by the distinguished hitmakers Max Martin and Shellback. The year’s biggest caller philharmonic enactment is astir apt Huntr/x, the fictional miss radical from the animated Netflix movie “KPop Demon Hunters.” When Demi Lovato, the erstwhile Disney teen idol, wanted to spell backmost to her roots, she released “Fast,” a perfectly superficial nine track; the accompanying medium is called, appropriately, “It’s Not That Deep.” Even MGK, the rapper turned rocker, tried to reinvent himself earlier this twelvemonth with a video called “Cliché,” successful which helium danced and lip-synched similar a boy-bander hopeless for 1 past hit. It was an amusing pivot, though it inspired specified aggravated mockery that MGK felt moved to grounds an Instagram reel explaining himself. “It’s a popular song, man,” helium said.

In this mode and successful galore others, Rosalía is exceptional. She is simply a trained flamenco vocalist from Spain who recovered an planetary assemblage successful 2018, erstwhile she released “El Mal Querer,” an medium afloat of diaphanous flamenco-pop experiments, which besides served arsenic her thesis task astatine the prestigious Catalonia College of Music. Rosalía’s sound, afloat of curlicued vocal melodies and precise hand-clap rhythms, didn’t lucifer thing other successful the popular universe, but Rosalía herself was evidently a star, and she followed the medium with a bid of high-profile collaborations, including reggaetón hits with J Balvin (“Con Altura”) and Bad Bunny (“LA NOCHE DE ANOCHE”). With her fierce, beat-driven medium “MOTOMAMI” (2022), she took her spot among the Spanish-language artists who person lately transformed fashionable music. But these days she has thing antithetic successful mind. When she announced that the archetypal azygous from her caller medium was going to beryllium called “Berghain,” immoderate fans expected creation music—Berghain is the sanction of the world’s astir celebrated techno club, successful Berlin. What they got, instead, was fundamentally a three-minute opera, implicit with an orchestral overture and a impermanent quality by the avant-garde vocalist and composer Björk, who arrives arsenic a deus ex machina, howling, “This is divine intervention.” The accompanying album, “Lux,” turns retired to beryllium a crisp swerve distant from the logic of the popular economy, successful which songs vie to supply the astir pleasance to the astir people. “Lux” sounds little similar a streaming playlist and much similar a cult film, oregon possibly an creation installation: determination are 15 songs (eighteen connected the vinyl and CD versions), divided into 4 movements, with lyrics successful thirteen antithetic languages, and Rosalía’s astir changeless companion is not the bushed of reggaetón but alternatively the swooping and swelling of the London Symphony Orchestra. Having conquered the popular satellite with ease, Rosalía is present embracing difficulty.

A definite recalcitrance has ever been portion of what makes Rosalía truthful compelling. As a teen-ager, she appeared connected “Tú Sí Que Vales,” a talent-competition amusement connected Spanish television; erstwhile 1 justice wasn’t impressed, she said, successful Spanish, “I didn’t travel present to judge criticism,” and the assemblage whooped successful encouragement. Early successful her career, she was sometimes celebrated for fleeing the strictures of flamenco euphony successful bid to find state connected the creation floor, and connected the charts. But creation floors and charts person their ain rules, and 1 of the functions of an medium arsenic aggravated and expansive arsenic “Lux” is to punctual popular listeners of each the limits that they typically instrumentality for granted. The medium has a notably wide dynamic range, which means that listeners who thin successful during the quiescent passages whitethorn find themselves blasted backward by the thunderous climaxes. In “De Madrugá,” she sings a fewer lines successful Ukrainian to evoke the fervor of Olga of Kiev, the tenth-century ruler who massacred the people liable for sidesplitting her husband. And for “Mio Cristo” she fundamentally wrote herself an Italian aria and past learned to sing it, gathering to a glorious precocious B-flat that she hits and holds; we perceive a speedy snippet of Rosalía’s workplace banter (“That’s going to beryllium the energy, and then—”) earlier the orchestra cuts her disconnected with the reverberant last note. Pop stars often speech astir moving hard, but Rosalía makes astir of her peers look lazy, and, indeed, immoderate listener not inclined to embark upon a multilingual probe task whitethorn extremity up feeling a spot lazy, too. Rosalía’s representatives asked journalists to perceive to this medium successful the dark, portion speechmaking the lyrics connected a screen—logically impossible, for astir of us, but doubtless Rosalía herself could find a way.

There is simply a communicative to “Lux,” oregon possibly determination are a fewer antithetic stories. The lyrics hint astatine love, betrayal (one opus includes the operation “un terrorista emocional”), revenge, and acceptance. The combined effect tin beryllium exhausting, successful ways Rosalía’s erstwhile albums ne'er were: the twists and turns of “La Yugular,” a theological exploration inspired by Islam, are easier to respect than to enjoy—at slightest until the finale, a pleasingly earthy clip from an aged Patti Smith interview. Sometimes the lightest moments are the astir affecting, specified arsenic when, successful “Reliquia,” Rosalía floats into her precocious register, delivering a sumptuous and faintly sacrilegious look of emotion and loss. “I’ll beryllium your relic / I americium your relic,” she sings, successful Spanish, and for a infinitesimal it each seems simple.

Like virtually each musicians, Rosalía seems to person mixed feelings astir however abstracted she wants to be, really, from the popular marketplace. “I request to deliberation that what I’m doing is pop, due to the fact that different I don’t think, then, that I americium succeeding,” she told the New York Times, successful a caller interview. “What I privation is to bash euphony that, hopefully, a batch of radical tin enjoy.” But of people that’s not each she wants. The azygous astir astonishing contributor to “Lux” is Mike Tyson, who during a chaotic 2002 property league told a journalist, “I’ll fuck you till you emotion me, faggot.” This phrase, without the incendiary last word, interrupts the different elegant coda of “Berghain,” shouted a fewer times by the physics shaper Yves Tumor. The interruption is simply a shock—startling enough, perhaps, to dissuade immoderate listeners from adding the opus to their favourite streaming playlists, lest it ruin the mood. Maybe that’s the idea. Music-streaming services promote america to premix and match, truthful possibly they besides promote america to walk much clip listening to songs that acceptable pleasantly alongside different songs. A tiny but important fig of musicians person begun to withhold their euphony from these outlets, immoderate for economical reasons (the sites don’t wage much), immoderate for governmental reasons (Daniel Ek, the C.E.O. of Spotify, is besides the president of a military-technology company), and immoderate for nary stated crushed astatine all. The caller Rosalía medium is disposable everywhere, but it echoes this tendency to retreat from a big, messy system, successful the anticipation of encouraging listeners to prosecute successful a much intentional, single-minded way; it’s an medium that’s not designed to beryllium ubiquitous, oregon to gaffe smoothly into our lives and playlists. “Lux” wants to marque america halt immoderate we’re doing and listen, which inevitably means that it’s little broadly appealing—less listenable, successful a sense—than albums that inquire less. It’s besides overmuch harder to forget. ♦