On the surface, this album may look closer to an arduous academic quiz than the latest popular music record by an artist who just had a last hit was a collaboration with an international K-pop icon. Split into four separate movements and performed in thirteen tongues, we have a dizzying classical-tinged work investigating female mystery, religious transcendence, and corporal transformation, often through the prism of different female saints. The dissolution of a romance—a theme handled with grounded honesty elsewhere—is shot upwards here, supported by the lush presence of a full orchestra and work from a Pulitzer-winning composer among a vast list of contributors. The pure audacity alone renders the work of other artists look quite laughable.
Transcending Scholarly Exercise
The fact that Lux manages to escape dry intellectual posturing is nearly miraculous, and complete credit belonging to the artist. Although this is not her first project to blend the past with modern styles, the ambitions feel far greater here, with the balancing act more precarious. The element that really elevates her fourth release, beyond its multilayered tunes, rich compositions, and engrained theatricality, is a core sense of playfulness. Much like the legendary Björk during her height, you find a wondrous sense to Rosalía's voice that pulls the listener up in its tornado. When she is tearing your heart apart, the listener still want to stay alongside her through the journey.
A Signature Example of Joy
That exuberant energy shines brightly on a stirring Italian song about a saint. It bathes in a string-drenched melancholy over more than four moments. Suddenly, all the music drops away, and there's a spontaneous giggle followed by a comment prior to a hilariously exaggerated orchestral crescendo crashes in like cartoonish force. The song then segues into the frenetic single featuring galloping strings, a powerful choir, and a surprise appearance from the artist herself.
"The charm of Lux lies in you rarely quite know—or even want to know—where it is going next."
Almost each track ends at a totally different point than where it started. A track examines the transient nature of celebrity over a featherlight orchestration only to disintegrating into digital chaos. Elsewhere, a song echoing her earlier trap-infused work begins off moody and sinister, featuring menacing beats, before fluttering traditional rhythms and a heavenly choir arrive to soften the song's jagged edges.
The Bridge Of Experiment and Pop
Another crucial achievement on Lux is straddling the gap of radical innovation and broad appeal. This is no coincidence that it has achieved the artist's highest-charting work to break into the upper reaches of major charts: its heart contains a collection of truly catchy pop songs. One track performed primarily in English swells around a refrain that feels to collect more and more infectious hooks while it spirals upward. That trick gets repeated on another powerful track that grows and constricts, intertwining multiple tunes as a complex weave.
- A dance-infused number charms via its jaunty, Disney-adjacent drama and a chant-along hook.
- Lyrically, it shares the pop culture honesty of other breakup anthems, eviscerating a former lover labeled an "emotional terrorist".
- Throughout these tracks, the singing have a painted-on edge, like a fairy-tale figure hiding a knife: "Gold medal in acting like a motherfucker / You have the podium of letdown."
A Maximalist Feast for the Soul
Lux represents popular music on a grand scale, an ambitious grasp for capital-A artistry in an era of looming artificial sameness. It rejects self-absorption for sublime transcendence, crafting an over-the-top spectacle that masterfully controls its own inherent excess. It is a deep well of buried gems that requires patience to fully mine but never seem like a chore. While other major pop albums of the year seemed like feasting on scraps, this record offers a sumptuous feast at which the characters at the table, perhaps intoxicated on sacred wine, flit from conversations about historical saints, the galvanizing sensation of heartbreaking grief, and shared gossip about hopeless partners. In essence, it's a contemporary musical from music's most endlessly creative practitioner.
