Buscabulla’s Raquel Berrios and Luis Alfredo Del Valle, companions in life and artwork, make music that flits between humid synth workout routines and soft-focus ballads. The pair’s debut album, 2020’s Regresa, mirrored on their native Puerto Rico within the wake of Hurricane Maria via pensive lyrics and relaxed grooves, a breakthrough that led to a standout characteristic on Unhealthy Bunny’s 2022 blockbuster Un Verano Sin Ti. A part of Buscabulla’s appeal is the ethereal synchronicity between Berrios’ soprano and Del Valle’s instrumentation, which provides a lightness to their sound at the same time as they zero in on weighty points like colonization and self-doubt. On Buscabulla’s second album Se Amaba Así, the pair shift focus by breaking down a friction level in their very own relationship with stunning candor. In smoldering synth-pop thick with references to interpersonal battle, the duo creates an interesting mix of kinds that attracts again the curtain on the spinier moments of their life.
Writing the brand new LP poked at tender emotional bruises for Buscabulla. (“A veces quiero ser yo/Porque siempre somos nosotros,” Berrios admits on “De Lejito”: “Generally I need to be me/As a result of we’re at all times us.”) “At first, I used to be like, Why are you doing this?” Del Valle stated about first studying Berrios’ frank lyrics, which draw from the melodramatic Latin energy ballads and salsa songs of her youth to look at belief and codependency. The forthright strategy, nonetheless, is a potent one, drip-feeding a way of drama into the band’s traditional breezy sound. Berrios adopts a sing-song staccato on “Te Fuiste” to depict a push-and-pull earlier than a potential breakup. She ultimately relents on the music’s bridge, simply as rhythmic percussion plumes via the music’s misty synths: “Fuimos dos niños/Que nunca aprendimos/El juego del romance” (“We have been two kids/That by no means realized/The sport of romance”). “Miraverahí,” in the meantime, is among the many band’s greatest songs, a spangled, disco-flecked synth-pop spotlight cruising on a sturdy bassline that belies the music’s core heartbreak, each calling out a scarcity of affection and threatening to go away for good.
Se Amaba Así ornaments that emotional turmoil with a brand new addition: Del Valle takes lead on vocals for the primary time. In a crooning baritone on “El Empuje,” he gives a flipside to Berrios’ songs; Del Valle needs to threat all of it for her, regardless of the potential mutual destruction which will come, giving a perceptive counterpoint to her earlier storms of uncertainty. The album’s affecting title observe ultimately weaves their voices collectively towards lullaby-soft backing vocals; right here, Berrios sings of getting inherited relationship habits in sparse, transferring particulars. Attempting to kind out why her mother and father have grown distant from each other, she finds she’s repeating the identical story: “Me acostumbré/Pensaba que/Se amaba así” (“I obtained used to it/I believed that’s/The way in which love was”). When Del Valle joins in for the second refrain, they each appear to acknowledge the cycle in themselves and one another, decided to make an effort to purge it from their lives and begin contemporary.
The duo obtain that sense of renewal towards the album’s closing songs. The standout “Mi Marido” is a swooning declaration of affection, opening with a pattern lifted from Paquitín Soto’s “Se Vende un Corazón” (Soto and Berrios each hail from Arecibo, a metropolis on the northern coast of Puerto Rico). The music then blooms right into a heat mixture of guitar, drums, and güiro, floating round Berrios’ incandescent refrain: “Aunque no estuviera escrito/Te decía mi marido,” Berrios sings (“Even when it wasn’t written/I referred to as you my husband”). As on the remainder of Se Amaba Así, Buscabulla effortlessly turns hassle in paradise into nourishment for the soul.
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Buscabulla: It cherished itself
