Gabriel Rios

Playa Negra is a confessional album by an artist adverse to oversharing. Though staying clear of any real life events, he concedes that this is definitely an album of “love gone bad.” While allowing himself to give voice to what he calls “the petty and the trite and the embarrassing,” Ríos overpasses specific details and the easy disses common to pop hits. His personal version of a revenge record turns often to inspiration from Cormac McCarthy’s dark literary landscapes, as sublimely indifferent as the black beach of the album’s title track, which for the singer-songwriter serves as “a good metaphor for the person who doesn’t care about you.” Mythic characters from Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” Odysseus and Don Quixote appear in transcendent meditations that, musically and lyrically, reference the tragi-comic history of histrionic Latin heartbreak songs. In the studio, Ríos and his collaborator and co-producer Ruben Samama may start with Cuban son or Puerto Rican salsa ballads, then strip the familiar rhythms to their core to create breathing space between the beats. Approaching from an indie rock perspective, they experiment with rhythm and bass structures while preserving the armature of tropical music melodies and chords, creating a spectral cushion for Ríos’ vocals that he refers to as “Postapocalyptic Latin music.” Judy Cantor Navas