Angélica Garcia Provokes A Double Take
Angélica Garcia: Gemelo on Partisan Records
Album Release Date: 7th June 2024
Album Review by Spencer Ide
This album arrives from curious roots and it surprises and delights by turns, with music that fills the room with refreshing combinations that repay replay, after replay. This is an album that may well, in twenty years time, be found in everyone’s collection. Think how everyone seems to hold a copy of ‘Tapestry’, ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, and ‘Buena Vista Social Club', well I would like to think that Angélica Garcia’s latest album, ‘Gemelo’, her first on Partisan records, has the makings of being an equally enduring work.
The ten songs packaged up here are headed up by the perfectly complete, two minute, opening track Reflexiones. It is a delightful introduction to the theme of this ten song collection. This album captures a pause in life's struggles, a chance to précis the route to today taken by the artist and her ancestors, before embarking into whatever might follow.
The album unwraps, expands and evolves track by track to become an increasingly complex and fascinating experience. From that quiet, choral introduction we are drawn into a longer, more complex track and current single, Color de Dolor (Colour of Pain). Then, from there, Garcia's songs include some dramatic compositions, as well as simpler numbers that balance the stormy waters, with calm.
Subtle electronic sounds had underpinned the short opening song, but throughout there are beats and hard rhythms to accompany the use of her layered voice and changing moods which are expressed as the album rolls through. If I point you towards Massive Attack’s Mezzanine and the complexity of Portishead, you will begin to appreciate what Garcia is doing with this thought-provoking, complex and striking opus.
Gemelo lays Garcia’s beautiful singing over rich, musical lines. For example, Angel (eterna), offers a soft and heavenly accompaniment of synthesiser strings that send the song into the ether, but there is a lot more going on between the layers, which reward the listener for listening repeatedly. Mirame, (Look at me) builds some heavy tension from a gentle beginning, then takes a diverting path, before reaching a soothing conclusion.
The first song produced for this album Juanita came into the world at Garcia's bedroom makeshift altar, channelling the uninvited, but welcome spirit of her great-great-grandmother, who turned out to be named Juanita too. The song and title came first, but the ancestral connection was seen by Angélica's mother, the singer, Angelica, who had enjoyed US chart success with a cover of Angel Baby in 1991. The twin (Gemelo) referred to by the album title, is that mirror-self discovered at Garcia's altar, the version of herself with whom she is able to intuit the spiritual dimensions of life, previously believed to have been in her ancestor's gift.
Throughout this album, emotion receives full expression. Reactions to tempestuous challenges and threats the artist has experienced – as well as clues to the growth of self-awareness, spiritual openness and people who left a mark, or shone a light for the musician.
This album has the humanity and authenticity I first heard in PJ Harvey's initial songs, which presented female experience and the power of womanhood, rarely previously seen in the raw through the prism of popular music, although due deference should be given to the music and art, (on-going) from Yoko Ono. In Garcia's work, Y Grito and El Que are the songs that kick off the nominal B side of the album, with unbridled expressions of womanhood.
The final track, Paloma, joyously celebrates living, with all its pain, grief and contrasts, that is to say, to feel is to live. The two sides of this album are brilliantly balanced.
In making Gemelo, Garcia worked at a studio in Virginia with producer Carlos Arévalo, many miles from her LA family home. Did this excursion to the Eastern Seaboard allow the artist to step away from conventional thinking? She has certainly taken some huge artistic strides with this compact collection of tunes. She is reported to have said that the six weeks recording session for this album "...was like getting dropped into ice water." She has devoted time to a thorough deconstruction of her relationships with religion, spirit, heritage and womanhood and from that process Gemelo was born.
Mostly sung in Spanish, with English sparingly used, the album shifts from simple choral to complex songs and incorporates accompanying changes in rhythm and tone which reflect and document her personal development. For an English-speaking listener, the album offers exquisite and mysterious moments of insight, which encourage a powerful desire to learn more Spanish. Without that linguistic knowledge, the listener misses out on the poetry and power of Garcia's lyrics, but the album is still magnificent without that understanding.
What Partisan Records has issued here is an album that demonstrates the depth of artistic expression and musical talent to be found by scraping off the stale surface of the long-established music biz. This is an imaginative album, from an exciting talent.
For Angélica Garcia the road back to Virginia, from her two year period living with her folks because of the pandemic, resulted in laying down the final recording of Gemelo and it "...was like a fog clearing. It felt like soul returning to the body." she confesses. It is an album that breathes a cleansing fire; a vital recording. A wonder-filled and wonderful album!
Tickets for Angélica Garcia 2024 UK tour are here
The Louisiana, Bristol (10th June, 2024)
Castle Hotel, Manchester (11th June, 2024)
The Lower Third, London (12th June, 2024)
Heartbreakers, Southampton (23rd July, 2024)
The Portland Arms, Cambridge (24th July 2024)
Angélica Garcia is also appearing at Latitudes Festival (26th July, 2024)
Angélica Garcia 'Gemelo' is released on Partisan Records on 7th June, 2024.
Reviewed by Spencer Ide
5th June 2024
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