Score: 10
Rosalía slowly came to the extensive public eye since her last year's phenomenal debut record Los Ángeles, a work of immaculate beauty that took some traditional flamenco songs and gave them a somewhat modern twist. Since then, the 25-year-old girl has radically been called "the new voice of Spain" for her crispy, Middle-Eastern infused, relentlessly raw vocals, eerie production and glamourous persona. So, after such hype, her next move has been feeling like a constant enigma to us: what can she do to surpass her folky image? How will she be able to transcend space and time? The answer seems simpler: by releasing an album that's all the same mesmerising and even more fully realised. That's how her new album feels.
First of all, the instumentals. There's glitch here, as well as pop, electronic and folk chants, but the work essentialy and decisively breathes flamenco (claps, crasps, verses, laments, guitars, impeding void; it's all ever-present). And all of those seemingly disparate elements connect and cohere with razor-blade precision and personality.
Then, the vocals (of course). Rosalía has always sounded out of this planet, but here she devotes herself to the point of sacrecy; you can literally feel her vocal chords melting into your ears, and that's just when the angelic choruses and intermingles don't come up to play; there, perfection is palpable and engrossing.
El Mal Querer is just 30 minutes long: a length that's as criminally short as needily clever, where every single second seemed to have been meticulously calculated and asserted. You make the most of each of them, as if you know death's around the corner and you're determined to live the last minutes of your life to the fullest. But the record is also a monumental artistic achievement: every song has its distinct picture (that feel more like works of art by themselves) and tell a chapter into a moving concept story based on a 14th-century book, that the singer decided to reimagine in order to create her own vision of toxic love, existential crisis and female empowering. And for all its stubbornly theatrical interplay, magnificence is not the excepcion but the norm.
One can easily identify the auteur's influences and references, from the cracky percussion of M.I.A, the Vulnicura-era strings attached to Arca, the revelatory verses of Björk, the ullulating piano arpeggios of James Blake and Massive Attack, the touching vococoder of Bon Iver, the sound effects of PC Music and Charli XCX, the kung-fu musique concrète of Wu-Tang Clang, the otherworldliness of FKA Twigs, the R&B-tinged ballads of Frank Ocean, the chirpy videogame-like microsounds of Zelda, and even melodies that recall Justin Timberlake and Annie Lennox. And despite all of that, Rosalía fully manages to sound completely her own, and that's precisely the point: there's no one, absolutely no human being on earth who can do music this personal and unique. Or at least not that the public eye has yet to meet.
Yes, Los Ángeles is a magnific work, one that's pleasant to go back to all the time, but El Mal Querer is a thousand times better, for its complex arrangements, its vocal deliveries, its solid story and its unwavering spirit and gut. Within this short but intese millennium, there's not a better Spanish-speaking album one can think of that's better than this, and there's not a single musical talent that feels as promising as she does.
This might still be the beginning of Rosalía's career, one that's surely to be colossal, but that doesn't take the fact that she's throwing absolutely everything to the table and, for all her courage and daring to experiment and allow herself to wholly be, the record shines and slaps from beginning to end; it functions and delves as the purest macro-reflection of someone's soul. It embarks. It pulsates. It lives. It's there, in front of you. And you should be thankful for that.
Tracks I like the most: Malamente, Que No Salga La Luna, Pienso En Tu Mirá, De Aquí No Sales, Bagdad, Di Mi Nombre, Maldición
Tracks I like the least: Nana (if I have to choose one)
Artist: Rosalía
Country: Spain
Album: El Mal Querer
Released: 02/11/2018
Genres: Flamenco, Pop, Experimental, Glitch Pop, Folk, Avant-Garde
Length: 30:19
