Maria Usbeck’s latest album Naturaleza is a bold new chapter for the always shape-shifting Ecuadorian singer-songwriter, diving deep into her singular realm of idiosyncratic pop music while retaining the observational, inquisitorial perspective that’s marked her work thus far. Usbeck’s third album for the Cascine label follows the striking debut Amparo from 2016 (which featured co-production credits from Caroline Polachek) and 2019’s expansive, exploratory Envejeciendo, which found Usbeck stretching her legs into the warm glow of 1980s electronic music and the spacious grooves of city pop. Since that album, she’s also released the one-off single “Hollow,” which draped her entrancing vocals in a futuristic sheen amidst starry-eyed synths and the frissons of dialup technology.
Naturaleza arrives after what Usbeck describes as “a forced, fake retirement that lasted more than a year,” the conclusion of which caused her to collide with the natural world’s strange, serene, and endless outgrowths. “The chaos of life stood in stark contrast to the stillness and beauty around me—the overwhelming presence of nature,” she says. “It was in the woods that I was reborn, where I found both inspiration and solace.” What emerged from Usbeck, creatively, is the free-flowing and hallucinatory approach captured on Naturaleza—recalling Julia Holter’s smeared-lens art-pop fantasias as well as the propulsive indie-pop of label contemporaries Yumi Zouma. “Current” features Usbeck’s most soaring chorus to date (“How does it feel / To be so far in?”) amidst warm piano and a driving bassline, and “Mantarraya” rides a skipping backbeat as she sings like a feather in the breeze, soft waves of feedback cresting at her feet—and then there’s the opening track “Floating,” which pairs the tactile electronic sound of Envejeciendo with moonlit sax that immediately recalls sophistipop greats the Blue Nile.
In many ways Naturaleza feels like the culmination of Usbeck’s incredible career thus far while offering endless, thrilling paths from which her music could take us next. She reflects: “Humanity stands at a breaking point; we've lost our bond with the natural world. We deem ourselves superior, advanced, yet it’s only through harmony and a symbiotic relationship with nature that we can avert an inevitable doom. I propose we learn to reconnect, to rediscover the balance we've forgotten. That's what I've been up to and what this record is about. Healing.”
-Larry Fitzmaurice
