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As Empress Of, Lorely Rodriguez has spent the previous decade transferring between punchy, upbeat synth-pop and introspective ballads with unselfconscious ease. Even when she’s leaned towards extra mainstream pop, as on 2022’s Save Me EP, the Honduran American producer and singer-songwriter’s key influences have shined by. Whether or not she’s channeling the vertiginous serenades of Cocteau Twins or the contorted stylings of Imogen Heap, her catalog bursts with fizzy, unpredictable love songs in English and Spanish, which have landed her spots opening for pop stars like Carly Rae Jepsen and Rina Sawayama. On her fourth album, the independently launched For Your Consideration, Rodriguez dials into an insatiable new groove, reprising an effusive, sensual perspective over propulsive dance and electropop. It’s essentially the most intricate Empress Of album thus far, a blinding showcase for Rodriguez’s sudden vocal and manufacturing method as she experiences the peaks and valleys of heated romance.
Rodriguez executive-produced For Your Consideration and tapped a fleet of different rising songwriters and producers to help, together with Casey MQ, Umru, Cecile Consider, and Nick León. The varied unfold helps map out the album’s mischievously unpredictable backdrops: These songs corkscrew and pull Rodriguez’s vocals like taffy, twisting into buildings of their very own; it’s as if she took Björk’s Medúlla as a conceptual north star and ran with it at full pace to the membership. A gap suite of whispers morphs right into a pitch-shifted sample on the seductive “Sucia,” whose bilingual singsong verses result in a deliciously bawdy refrain, her voice rising to a vibrant whoop. Later, her backing vocals swarm right into a extra ominous, chittering activate the standout “Preciosa,” including texture to the music’s deep bass and passionate come-ons. “Entra a mi mar/Mójate ya/Ya tú verás/Que te enamoras” (Enter my sea/Get moist/You’ll see that you simply’ll fall in love) she sings gently, earlier than her voice crumples right into a cooing, stuttering rhythm.
For Your Consideration thrives on the elasticity of the human voice, whereas its lyrics flip from underhanded lovers to the flush of recent affairs. Gasps and hiccups form the fricative beat on the tender opening title observe, which dissects a collection of crimson flags, letting her phrases linger with fading need. Right here she riffs on the awards-season “on your consideration” campaigns that actors and administrators run as a metaphor for an unbalanced relationship; the road, repeated through the refrain, takes on a pleading tone that slowly grows extra steely with confidence. “You wrote the script,” she permits, coming to the belief with sharp lucidity. “Your phrases, not mine.”
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