Album of the Week: Rosalía – LUX
Spanish pop visionary Rosalía, who stunned critics with 2018’s El Mal Querer and conquered the globe with the art-pop brilliance of 2022’s MOTOMAMI, returns this week with her fourth studio album, LUX.
Following last year’s collaboration ORAL with fellow experimentalist Björk, LUX marks a striking departure from the exuberant, kinetic pop energy its immediate predecessor. Rather than replicate MOTOMAMI’s wild freeness, Rosalía has, over three years, sculpted a deeply intricate and eclectic work of Latin pop infused with classical, experimental, and electronic flourishes. It is the record that cements her status as one of contemporary pop’s most fearless and singular auteurs, a throne long occupied by her collaborator Björk, who appears here alongside Yves Tumor on the album’s lead single Berghain.
Like her contemporary FKA twigs, Rosalía is equally capable of crafting heart-wrenching, cinematic balladry and visionary, forward-thinking electronic pop. At times, these contrasting modes fuse brilliantly. The glitching outro of Reliquia (Relic), the restless pulse of Divinize, and the hip-hop-inflected Porcelana (Porcelain) featuring Ukrainian rapper M1SHKA all stand out in the album’s first movement, which concludes with the operatic splendour of Mio Christo Piange Diamanti (My Christ Weeps Diamonds).
The aforementioned Berghain must be one of this year’s most beguiling lead singles a furious, shape-shifting piece that opens LUX’s second movement with cinematic intensity. Rising and falling strings evoke the drama of a Peter Greenaway film, while Rosalía, Björk, and Yves Tumor trade vocals like actors in a stage play exploring spirituality, sensuality, and existential tension. It’s a whirlwind of emotion that is impulsive, panic-like, and enthralling. In contrast, La Perla follows with tender sweetness, its narrative of selfish love softened by lullaby-esque tones and its Disney-like sound design before the funky, strutting optimism of De Madruga (At Dawn) restores a sense of rhythmic excitement.
The humorously titled Dios Es Un Stalker (God Is a Stalker) heralds the album’s third movement, and is perhaps LUX’s most immediately infectious moment, a slick, vibrant, and playful track. It’s soon counterbalanced by the darkly romantic La Yugular and the theatrical grandeur of Sauvignon Blanc. LUX’s final stretch ventures deeper into classical and avant-garde territory with Memoria, before closing out with the breathtaking Magnolias, an elegiac, redemptive piece of such spiritual clarity and devotion it feels destined for the house of God.
With LUX, Rosalía has created one of the year’s most distinctive, challenging, and transcendent pop albums. It may eschew the immediate rush of MOTOMAMI, but it offers something greater in return, a work of immense emotional and spiritual depth, proof once more that Rosalía is operating in a realm entirely her own.
