At first glance, Lux may look closer to a challenging university examination rather than a new popular music project from an artist who just had a last single featured an international pop icon. Broken across 4 separate movements and performed in 13 languages, it is a breathtaking orchestral-influenced work that delves into female mystery, spiritual transcendence, and corporal transformation, frequently via the lens of various women saints. The dissolution of a romance—a theme treated with grounded honesty elsewhere—is launched skyward on this record, carried by the lush sound of a major symphony orchestra and contributions from an award-winning songwriter within a vast roll call of collaborators. The pure ambition alone makes the work of other pop stars look rather modest.
Transcending Scholarly Pretense
The fact that Lux succeeds in escape overly intellectual posturing is nothing short of a miracle, with complete credit going to the artist. While it's not her first project to blend the past and the present, its ambitions feel much greater on Lux, with the tightrope walk far more precarious. What really elevates this fourth album, outside of its multilayered tunes, dense compositions, and inherent drama, proves to be an essential spirit of fun. Similar to the iconic Björk during her peak, you find a wondrous sense to Rosalía's singing that pulls the listener into its tornado. When she's tearing your heart apart, the listener nevertheless want to stay right there through the ride.
A Prime Moment of Joy
This exuberant spirit comes forth clearly on the stunning piano-led ballad about Saint Clare. It bathes in a sorrowful melancholy over more than four moments. Suddenly, everything drops silent, and we hear a spontaneous giggle and a comment before a hilariously exaggerated orchestral crescendo thuds down with comedic force. The song then shifts into the frenetic single featuring racing orchestration, a powerful choral group, and a cameo appearance from none other than herself.
"The magic with Lux is that the listener rarely quite understand—or even want to know—what you will go next."
Almost each song ends in a totally distinct place from how it started. One moment explores the transient trappings of celebrity over a delicate orchestration before disintegrating into digital chaos. Elsewhere, a song that recalls the artist's previous rhythmic style begins off moody and sinister, featuring prowling vocals, until sudden flamenco rhythms and an angelic chorus enter to soften the song's rough corners.
The Bridge Of Experiment and Accessibility
Another crucial achievement of Lux is straddling the line of bold innovation and mainstream accessibility. This is little coincidence that it has become her highest-charting work to crack the Top 5 of key charts: at its core a suite of utterly catchy pop songs. One track sung entirely in the English language builds around a refrain that seems to collect increasingly nagging hooks while it spins upward. That trick is repeated on another expansive ballad that expands and contracts, intertwining multiple melodies as a complex weave.
- A dance-infused number seduces with its jaunty, Disney-adjacent flair and an anthemic chorus.
- In its words, it aligns the cultural impact of contemporary breakup anthems, lambasting a former partner labeled an "emotional bully".
- Across these tracks, the singing have a sharp smile, like a storybook figure concealing a blade: "Gold medal in acting like a scoundrel / You have won the trophy of disappointment."
An Opulent Feast for the Soul
This album represents popular music on a grand scale, a hungry reach for capital-A Art amid of looming artificial blankness. It eschews self-absorption in favor of glorious transcendence, creating an over-the-top spectacle that skillfully controls its built-in ridiculousness. This is an abundant source of hidden treasure that requires time to fully explore but doesn't feels like hard work. While other big pop albums of the year felt like feasting on meal, Lux offers a sumptuous banquet at which the guests at the table, perhaps intoxicated on sacred wine, flutter between discussions about historical figures, the profound feeling of soul-shattering grief, and shared stories about hopeless partners. In essence, it's a contemporary musical from pop's truly endlessly inventive practitioner.
