on LUX by Rosalía

I've been thinking a lot lately about my top albums this year. This has been a good year for music discovery (from my perspective). I'd not taken the time for it and forgot how life giving it is. But that's changed this year; I've even gone to a couple of concerts! Anyways, back to the top albums: I thought I mostly had it figured out but I was wrong . Someone I follow and respect posted about how they hadn't been able to listen to LUX by Rosalía (check it here on Qobuz) without crying yet and I thought "Dang. I need to check that out."

So check it out I did. I was getting ready to meet my wife out for a meeting so I loaded the kids in the car to meet. It was about 25 minutes away in rush hour so I turned it on, figuring that would give me an idea of what was going on. I'll just say - my daughter (13) and I were blown away (my son is 9 and was like "whatever" until Berghain came on and that one scared him a bit).

a bit about it...

Pitchfork calls it "avant garde classical pop." That's a pretty good description I think - pop is blended with opera and classical elements in particular to create an experience. You can listen to individual tracks (and many/most/all are great!) but it's something to behold listening straight through, tracking the different musical movements and themes.

From what I read Rosalía spent time diving into the lives and experiences of different female saints throughout history. Each song draws from these woman as inspiration in some fashion, which lends to an authentic exploration of the divine. Even more she took the time to represent each woman with her heart language - in total you'll find 13 different languages on this album!

what i loved...

language as an instrument

One of the more interesting things is the way that language is used. As I mentioned above, you'll find 13 on the album. Most people aren't going to know all of these languages. Some people might find this frustrating (I like lyrics a lot so I understand) but if you stop and close your eyes and let her vocals in all its expressiveness become an instrument it creates significant meaning and connection (I think). The ability of Sigur Ros to convey emotion and meaning using a made up language come to mind although on LUX the languages are very real and pay homage to the saints in question.

the ability of music to capture the divine

I'm a spiritual person and I haven't really claimed otherwise. One of the most significant ways I feel as if my soul or spirit or whatever you want to call it connects with the divine is through music. I think part of that is connecting with emotion is difficult for me and music provides something of a bridge but that's a separate topic for another day. In regards to LUX, so many of the songs bridge this gap between spirit and divine in a way I find deeply moving.

Both Divinize and Porcelana I feel really ground the human side of "spirit". This really then drives home the bridge by Björk on Berghain singing "The only way to save us is through divine intervention." Then my favorite track shows up a bit later (La Yugular) which has the sense and feeling of the divine, in all of him/her/its expansiveness meeting encompassing the spirit with it's love:

And a continent does not fit in Him
But He fits in my chest
And my chest occupies His love
And in His love I want to lose myself

To be clear - I don't want to mis represent. LUX isn't a Christian album; the aforementioned La Yugular's title comes from an Islamic verse. In her own words (from here):

Mysticism is the inspiration. It's not trying to fit too much into specific codes, but more of what is my truth, what is my faith and how can I explain this and put it into words which is so hard?

favorite tracks

Again - I strongly encourage listening from start to finish. Let this album be an experience. Here are a few of my standouts though:

• Reliquia - A hopeful, catchy and deeply relatable track about the pieces of ourselves we leave behind in all the places we go.
• Divinize and Porcelana - as mentioned above.
• La Yugular - as mentioned above. I find this to be the most moving track on the album.

some closing thoughts

That ability to capture the divine and connect with our spirit is definitely why I'm loving this album so much. Rosalía does an amazing job at that on LUX. It really is a stunning album. There's no way it's not on my end of year list (populated with mostly metal and shoegaze albums so definitely an outlier).

I'll just close by saying: This isn't meant to be a review but rather an encouragement to go and listen.