The album begins by cracking open a time capsule: An eerie melody sung by what sounds like an old woman strains through vinyl distortion, as though arriving from a great distance. In a way, it has: The song, "Deixem lo dol" (which means something like "let us not mourn") is a relic of local Holy Week traditions; the archival recording was made years ago by a woman in Saint Augustine, Florida, where a contingent of Menorcans arrived in the late 1700s.
A careful blend of simplicity and pathos gives the album its power. In "Malanat," drawn from two field songs she turned up in her archival research, Ferrer sings of aching backs and crops going to seed, tracing an ancient-sounding melody over a subdued organ drone.
Ferrer is part of a wave of Spanish musicians intent on interrogating regional folk traditions, along with artists like de Elche, Tarta Relena, Maria Arnal i Marcel Bages, and even Rosalía, who got her start as a maverick flamenco singer. For Ferrer, that means responding to the reality of the present moment.
Her lyrics, however, are pointed: She sings of dying fish, drying aquifers, and young people forced out by a rapacious real estate market. It is a song of fierce—and fiercely protective—love.
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