{"id":9090,"date":"2014-06-10T15:23:45","date_gmt":"2014-06-10T15:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=9090"},"modified":"2014-06-10T15:23:45","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T15:23:45","slug":"alejandra-ribera-la-boca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2014\/06\/10\/alejandra-ribera-la-boca\/","title":{"rendered":"Alejandra Ribera \u2013 La Boca"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/2014\/06\/10\/alejandra-ribera-la-boca\/la-boca-coverfinal\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9091\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9091\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stylusmagazine.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/la-boca-coverfinal.jpg\" alt=\"la-boca-coverfinal\" width=\"300\" height=\"293\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Alejandra Ribera sets the bar high for her second album, <i>La Boca<\/i>, before the listener even hears it.<!--more--> In the liner notes, Ribera speaks of the slew of inspirations that birthed the record: sub-glacial lakes, bioluminescence, coming home, leaving home, watching through the window of a hospital where her friend lay dying. The songs don\u2019t disappoint, and it\u2019s easy to hear the weight of those concepts and events throughout the album.<\/p>\n<p><i>La Boca<\/i> is an album that feels as though it knows it\u2019s burdened, but refuses to let that stand in its way. The crescendo at the end of \u201cBad Again,\u201d where Ribera belts, \u201cI\u2019ve been spending time alone with love\/I\u2019ve been spending time alone about the house\/I\u2019ve been spending time alone with love\/and I suspect it\u2019s not enough\u201d leads directly into the upbeat drive of \u201cI Want,\u201d the spiritual axis of <i>La Boca<\/i>. The chorus starts off with Ribera admitting, \u201cthere\u2019s so much labour just in breathing lately,\u201d but jumps into a list of \u201cwants,\u201d hopeful in the sense that things might be bad right now but there are reasons not to give up.<\/p>\n<p>The emotional peak is \u201cUn Cygne La Nuit,\u201d a heartbreaker duet all smoky voices and sparse piano, where our two heroes whisper, \u201cthis is the saddest serenade\/these are the only notes left to play.\u201d With two minutes left, it switches gears, and together they sing, \u201ccome home, come home, come home,\u201d as if simply the power of those two words together would be enough to make it so.<\/p>\n<p><i>La Boca<\/i> is a stunning record, full of gorgeous atmosphere, but not at the cost of precise, heart-on-the-sleeve songwriting. Ribera says it took about 645 days, the gestation period of an African Elephant, to get done. Worth the wait. (Pheromone Recordings, <a href=\"http:\/\/alejandraribera.com\" target=\"_blank\">alejandraribera.com<\/a>) <b>Matt Williams<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alejandra Ribera sets the bar high for her second album, La Boca, before the listener even hears it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1056],"class_list":["post-9090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-utn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9090\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}