At first glance, this album might appear closer to a difficult scholarly challenge than a new pop album from an artist whose previous single featured a global pop star. Broken across four distinct sections and performed in thirteen tongues, it is a head-spinning orchestral-influenced album exploring feminine mystery, religious ascent, and corporal change, often through the perspective of different women saints. The end of a romance—a topic treated with raw honesty elsewhere—is launched heavenward on this record, carried by the constant presence of a major symphony orchestra and input from a Pulitzer-winning songwriter among an extensive roll call of collaborators. The pure daring alone renders the work of other pop stars look rather laughable.
Transcending Academic Exercise
The fact that this album succeeds in avoid dry academic posturing is almost a miracle, and full credit going to Rosalía. While this is not the first time project to fuse the past and modern styles, its stakes feel far higher here, with the balancing act more dramatic. What truly elevates this fourth release, beyond its multilayered melodies, rich compositions, and inherent drama, proves to be an essential spirit of fun. Similar to the iconic Björk during her peak, you find a wondrous quality to the vocalist's voice that pulls the listener up in its whirlwind. Even when she's tearing hearts apart, the listener still desire to stay right there for the journey.
A Signature Example of Exuberance
This playful energy comes forth brightly during a stunning piano-led ballad about a saint. It bathes in a sorrowful melancholy for more than four minutes. Suddenly, everything falls away, and there's a spontaneous giggle and a declaration prior to a comically exaggerated orchestral crescendo crashes down like cartoonish force. The track immediately shifts into the wild single featuring galloping orchestration, a powerful choral group, and a surprise appearance from none other than Björk.
"The magic with this album is that you rarely quite understand—or even want to know—what you is going to next."
Nearly every song ends at a totally distinct place from where it started. One moment explores the fleeting trappings of fame with a delicate orchestration only to disintegrating in electronic chaos. Elsewhere, a cut that recalls the artist's previous trap-infused work starts off dark and sinister, with prowling beats, before fluttering traditional rhythms and a heavenly choir arrive to smooth its jagged corners.
The Balance Between Art & Pop
A key achievement on the album is straddling the gap of radical innovation and mainstream accessibility. This is little coincidence that it has become her first work to break into the Top 5 of key markets: at its core a collection of truly catchy hits. One track performed primarily in English swells on a refrain that feels to gather more and more infectious melodies as it spins upward. That feat is repeated by a different expansive ballad that grows and constricts, weaving multiple melodies as an intricate weave.
- A dance-infused song charms with its playful, Disney-adjacent flair and a chant-along hook.
- Lyrically, it shares with cultural impact of contemporary heartbreak anthems, eviscerating an ex- lover labeled an "emotional bully".
- Throughout these tracks, the vocals have a sharp edge, akin to a fairy-tale figure concealing a knife: "Gold medal in acting like a scoundrel / You have the podium of letdown."
An Opulent Banquet for the Soul
Lux is popular music on a maximalist scale, an ambitious grasp for high Art in an era of impending artificial blankness. It eschews solipsism in favor of sublime elevation, crafting an over-the-top spectacle that masterfully manages its own inherent ridiculousness. This is an abundant well of buried treasure that takes patience to fully explore but doesn't feels like hard work. Where some major pop albums of the year felt like feasting on scraps, this record is a sumptuous feast at which the guests around the table, perhaps tipsy on holy drink, flutter from conversations about ancient figures, the profound feeling of heartbreaking sadness, and shared gossip about hopeless men. It is a contemporary theatrical production from pop's most restlessly creative practitioner.
