Initially, Lux may look more like an arduous scholarly challenge rather than the latest popular music record from a musician whose last single featured an international pop star. Split into four different parts and performed in thirteen languages, it is a head-spinning orchestral-influenced album exploring feminine mystique, spiritual ascent, and corporal transformation, often through the lens of different female saints. The end of a romance—a topic handled with grounded honesty elsewhere—is launched skyward here, buoyed by the lush presence of a major symphony orchestra and contributions from an award-winning songwriter within a long list of collaborators. Its sheer audacity alone renders the efforts of contemporary pop stars seem quite modest.
Transcending Academic Pretense
The fact that Lux manages to escape dry academic posturing feels nothing short of miraculous, and complete praise belonging to Rosalía. Although this is not her first project to blend historical sounds with modern styles, its stakes are much greater here, and the tightrope walk more pronounced. The element that truly elevates her fourth release, outside of its multilayered tunes, dense compositions, and engrained theatricality, is an essential sense of playfulness. Similar to the iconic artist during her peak, you find a captivating sense to the vocalist's singing that pulls you up in its tornado. Even when she's tearing hearts in two, you nevertheless want to be right there for the ride.
A Signature Moment of Joy
That playful spirit shines clearly during the stirring Italian ballad about a saint. It luxuriates in a string-drenched melancholy for several moments. Suddenly, all the music falls away, to reveal there's a gleeful laugh followed by a declaration before a hilariously over-the-top string surge crashes in like cartoonish impact. The track then shifts to the frenetic single driven by racing strings, a powerful choir, and a cameo appearance from none other than Björk.
"The magic with this album lies in the listener never exactly know—nor wish to know—where it is going to next."
Nearly every track finishes in a totally different point from how it began. One moment explores the transient trappings of fame over a featherlight orchestration before collapsing into electronic cacophony. Elsewhere, a cut echoing the artist's previous rhythmic style starts out dark and brooding, with menacing beats, until sudden traditional rhythms and an angelic chorus enter to smooth its rough corners.
The Balance Between Experiment and Pop
A key balancing act on Lux is straddling the line of bold experimentation and mainstream appeal. It is no coincidence that the album has become the artist's first work to crack the upper reaches of major markets: its heart contains a collection of truly undeniable pop songs. A song performed primarily in the English language swells around a refrain that feels to collect increasingly infectious hooks as it spirals upward. That feat gets echoed on a different powerful track that grows and constricts, intertwining layered melodies like a complex weave.
- A dance-infused song seduces with its jaunty, theatrical flair and an anthemic hook.
- Lyrically, it shares with cultural honesty of other heartbreak anthems, eviscerating an ex- partner described as an "psychological bully".
- Throughout the album, the vocals have a painted-on edge, like a storybook figure hiding a blade: "Gold medal in being a motherfucker / You have the podium of disappointment."
A Maximalist Banquet for the Soul
Lux represents popular music on a maximalist scale, a hungry reach for capital-A artistry in an era of looming artificial sameness. It eschews solipsism in favor of glorious transcendence, creating a dramatic drama that masterfully controls its own built-in excess. It is an abundant source of buried gems that takes patience to completely mine but never seem like a chore. While other big releases of the year seemed like a meager scraps, this record is a lavish banquet at which the guests around the table, some tipsy on holy drink, flutter between conversations about historical figures, the galvanizing feeling of soul-shattering grief, and common gossip about useless men. In essence, it's a contemporary theatrical production from pop's truly restlessly inventive visionary.
