An homage of her roots and a reinvigoration of her creative process, Xenia Rubinos showcased her most impressive and loose album to date.
For the past couple of years, Xenia Rubinos’ material has always been intriguing and refreshing. Like a child filled with curiosity, Xenia has always been embracing different genres, styles, and inspirations and blending them exquisitely, from pop, R&B, Neo-soul, Cuban music, and a lot more. This has resulted in her first two albums sounding creative and refreshing at the same time thanks to Xenia’s assured vocals, organic instrumentation with compositions that have melodic twists and turns, and lyrics that are confessional and also socially aware.
In her third album after five years, Xenia Rubinos has returned with her most daring album to date. There is no denying that her music chops have been retained in spades, but the process of this album was different and has resulted in this album being loose and also impressive. This album presents Xenia Rubinos embracing the past, the present, and the future. Where she was exhausted from touring, struggled with making a creative output, discovered unearthed memories from her childhood, and let’s not forget how the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement also influenced her. These contexts have led to the loose and spontaneous creation of this album, and how this also allowed Xenia Rubino to embrace the music of her roots and mix all that in her sound that makes the past sound futuristic, an homage to the music of her childhood and culture.
That being said, the music in this album is phenomenal from front to back. The weird composition touches of her past albums are still here, but they’re now hemmed in with garish electronics and autotuned vocals that help elevate these songs hit hard as they should, as Xenia Rubinos’ vocals still sound really great and the Latin sprinkled melodies sound effectively immense. While at first glance, it might seem that the lyricism lingers around themes of love sort of like a telenovela which makes sense, but it still does show some moments at certain points in time such as how people keep putting her in a box, how she stresses the exhaustion of overworking, and also her experience of joining a protest amidst Brianna Taylor’s death. And having the album split into two halves makes sense, as the first half is fiery and darting while the second half feels chilling and slower which makes the progression of this album fit just right.
People might get skeptical and grated by the electronics and the melodies on this album, this album still showcases Xenia Rubinos’ refreshing and impressive musicianship and talent. Able to put the Cuban and Latin music of her childhood, blending them with her brand of neo-soul and art-pop as a way of doing an homage, and making them sound futuristic while also making it sound timely, personal, and refreshing.
Favorite Tracks: All of them.
Least Favorite Track: N/A