\n<\/p>\n
\u201cMy blood speaks Spanish to me,\u201d Ang\u00e9lica Garcia sang in \u201cRed Moon Rising,\u201d<\/a> a track on her 2016 debut album, \u201cMedicine for Birds.\u201d<\/a> Garcia, who was born in California, was living in Virginia; the album leaned toward indie-rock and Americana. But the lyric turned out to be prophetic.<\/p>\n She was already thinking about the legacy of her maternal grandparents, who are from Mexico and El Salvador, and the musical heritage her parents maintained. Garcia\u2019s second album, \u201cCha Cha Palace,\u201d delved further into what it meant to be a Chicana growing up bicultural in the San Gabriel Valley \u2014 a quintessentially American experience, yet a very individual one. \u201cBeen wearing my roots and flying this flag,\u201d she sang in \u201cJ\u00edcama,\u201d<\/a> which former President Barack Obama listed among his favorite songs of 2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cOne day I showed my grandmother \u2018Cha Cha Palace,\u2019\u201d Garcia, 30, said in a video interview from the kitchen of her apartment in Los Angeles. \u201cAnd I realized I\u2019d made this whole record about growing up in El Monte, and she didn\u2019t even understand it. It just hit me that I\u2019m missing a whole side of my culture and people because of the language I\u2019m choosing to write in.\u201d<\/p>\n Garcia\u2019s new album, \u201cGemelo\u201d (\u201cTwin\u201d), out Friday, expands on both her bloodlines and her ambitions, and features lyrics in Spanish. True to its title, its songs are full of dualities: angels and demons, grief and healing, dreams and realities, mirror images. The album opens with a somber chorale titled \u201cReflexiones\u201d (\u201cReflections\u201d), while in \u201cGemini,\u201d Garcia sings, \u201cI see double everywhere I go.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The music is largely electronic, unleashing the directness of Garcia\u2019s voice \u2014 sometimes ghostly and airborne, sometimes a near-scream \u2014 amid programming, loops and layering. There are moments that hint at Kate Bush, Bjork, M.I.A. and Santigold.<\/p>\n Garcia grew up speaking Spanish at home with her grandparents, but said she lost it \u201conce I got into the public school system.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHonestly, I think the most punk thing I ever did was write in Spanish as a Chicana,\u201d she added. \u201cThere were all kinds of feelings from everybody. Some people were like, \u2018Your Spanish is really bad, don\u2019t do this, it\u2019s embarrassing.\u2019 And then you have other people like, \u2018Screw Spanish, it\u2019s the language of the colonizer,\u2019 yada yada yada.\u201d<\/p>\n But, she explained, \u201cI just realized that this is something I want to do. With any music I make from now on, I\u2019m going to be writing in both languages \u2014 or all three if you count Spanglish as its own language.\u201d<\/p>\n For Garcia, each has its own mood and musicality. \u201cTo me, English feels like a sword fight,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s very cutting and sharp and quick. Whereas Spanish feels like there\u2019s just this poetry to it. You stroll around something to get to it. Or you\u2019re sitting in front of a window on a rainy day writing. And then Spanglish feels like a party.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cCha Cha Palace\u201d was released in 2020, and Garcia was mid-tour when the pandemic set in. \u201cGemelo\u201d got its start amid pandemic isolation and introspection.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI was putting a lot of work and intention into understanding where I came from and where my family came from,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cI remember keeping all these journals like a madwoman, brainstorming and putting everything on the wall and trying to connect everything. I was trying to understand what things, what qualities of theirs that I maybe carried, like nature versus nurture. What is ingrained in me? And what is all mine?\u201d<\/p>\n One of the first songs she came up with was \u201cJuanita\u201d<\/a>; it arrived, she said, like \u201ca gift.\u201d It\u2019s an electronic cumbia \u2014 a bedrock Latin American rhythm \u2014 with lyrics about a mystical encounter: \u201cYou made me wake up\/ Your voice the sound of stars,\u201d Garcia sings. Only after she wrote it did she learn that one of her great-grandmothers was named Juanita.<\/p>\n Garcia grew up surrounded by music, singing and harmonizing with her family. Her mother had a recording career in the 1990s, billed as Angelica<\/a>; her stepfather worked in A&R, though he later became an Episcopal priest in Virginia. Garcia passed auditions to study at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, where she learned the subtleties of classical and jazz technique; her classmates included Phoebe Bridgers and members of Haim.<\/p>\n But some of her most important lessons came from her mother, who was steeped in the volatile emotionality of Mexican rancheras. \u201cHer way of teaching was to just make me start over,\u201d Garcia recalled. \u201c\u2018No, do it again. I don\u2019t believe you!\u2019 When you\u2019re singing dramatic music, you have to go all the way. I was learning the power of tapping into my emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The indie scene in Richmond, Va., gave Garcia the room to try different styles and experiment; she was playing in five bands at once while she was making \u201cCha Cha Palace.\u201d She moved in with her grandparents when the pandemic set in, and then to Brooklyn, where she spent a year and a half before returning to Los Angeles early this year. In New York, she worked at House of Yes, a dance club, performance space and party room in Bushwick.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery night was a different theme,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019d be biking home at 4:30 in the morning in my little go-go outfit, watching the moon and the sun exchange places, and avoiding rats.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, she was constructing new songs \u2014 largely with her voice, singing and beatboxing the rhythms, melodies, harmonies and hooks. During the interview, she picked up a TC Helicon looper, a gadget that she uses constantly, onstage and off. \u201cThe most free that I feel is singing, so the looper would help me a lot to flesh out ideas,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s almost my wife.\u201d<\/p>\n Garcia was already in touch with Carlos Are\u0301valo, the guitarist for the eclectic, retro-tinged Los Angeles band Chicano Batman. He had discovered her music among prospective opening acts for a 2020 tour that was canceled by Covid. In 2021, she began sending him songs in progress; he suggested ideas and possible producers. Eventually, she convinced him to produce the album himself \u2014 his first album production.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew this was a pivotal record for her in her career,\u201d Are\u0301valo said via video interview from a Chicano Batman tour stop in Oklahoma City. \u201cShe wanted the world to really see for the first time who she was on her terms, not what the label thought she should be and not what her community thought she should be.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Garcia had firm ideas for what she wanted: \u201cShe didn\u2019t want it to sound like a band,\u201d Are\u0301valo said. \u201cShe wanted it to sound like pop, electronic. She had a running joke: \u2018Like Radiohead with booty.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cGemelo\u201d doesn\u2019t aim for dance-floor simplicity; nor does it latch onto the world-conquering pop beat of reggaeton. It\u2019s an album of introspection and catharsis, about what Garcia calls \u201ccycles of grief.\u201d Garcia concocts her own beats, often irregular ones, and she revels in dynamic contrasts, from quiet and dulcet to explosive.<\/p>\n As she was writing the songs, Garcia said, \u201cthere were things that had me in my room crying, very low points. First it\u2019s just the grief, right? But then you get up and try to voice it and you get excited when you hear, \u2018Oh, but with that bass line, it sounds really cool.\u2019 It\u2019s kind of the coolest superpower ever that musicians have,\u201d she added. \u201cWe can take something that really could debilitate so many people and make it into something else \u2014 a whole other experience.\u201d<\/p>\n In \u201cColor de Dolor\u201d<\/a> (\u201cColor of Pain\u201d), she sings about drawing inspiration from sorrows: \u201cEven though I will never sever the tie with my pains\/ I paint them full of colors,\u201d she vows. And in \u201cEl Que\u201d<\/a> (\u201cHe That),\u201d she confronts a figure who undermines her, who \u201cMakes cold, robs energy, controls, bewitches,\u201d with a crescendo building as she warns, \u201cDon\u2019t follow me with your shadow \u2014 I have my light!\u201d<\/p>\n For Garcia, music has always been \u201cthe one place where I could say exactly what I thought,\u201d she said. \u201cMy whole life, I\u2019ve just tried to follow where the music was calling me.\u201d<\/p>\n She smiled and pointed to her head. \u201cIt\u2019s very loud in here.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n