Autopoietica

Chilean singer and songwriter Mon Laferte has experimented with and traversed an astonishing variety of musical styles and genres. Her earliest work was beat-conscious indie rock, while 2019s Norma ranged across 1940s big band, mambo, psychedelic cumbia, and salsa. In 2021, inspired by a documentary about the life and music of Chavela Vargas, she delivered Seis. Its songs run from ranchera and mariachi to bolero, banda, and corridos. Months later she issued the largely D.I.Y. 1940 Carmen, recorded in an L.A. apartment with her producer. The pair played all the instruments. Then theres 2023s Autopoietica, Lafertes only recording to deliberately borrow ideas from her catalog. Titled after the term "autopoiesis," coined by the Chilean biologist Humberto Maturan, its defined as "a being able to self-create or re-create itself". Laferte claimed it as a metaphor for herself and humanity: We have the ability to re-create ourselves at any time, creating new universes and personal mythologies in that process. Opener "Tenochtitlan" weds bolero and trip hop in its hopes for a better life -- the singer tells his mother over and again he will send for her, but she dies before he can. "Prendele Fuego" weds electronica, Latin jazz, and tango in a sultry proceeding driven by hand percussion and an organ. Single "NO + SAD" is bumping, sinister reggaeton that offers sarcasm and irony in a paean to the danger a lone womans liberation poses to society. The reggaeton jag is combined with polished salsa on "Metamorfosis." Single "40 y MM" melds trip hop, bolero, pop, rap, and Nuyorican-style salsa in relating the hard lessons Lafertes learned over 40 years. With a hint of salsa, the Chilean singer/songwriter keeps listeners on their toes musically intertwining several genres in less than four minutes. In "Levitico XX:IX" she employs ranchera and cumbia to take on one of the most oppressive verses in the bible that advocates stoning adulterers. "Ponocracia" melds cumbia and bolero in a pillowy, sensual weave of vocoders, electrified bandoneon, treated brass, and more before delivers "La Amantes Suicidas" in polished, articulate, vintage-style Cuban son. While "Mew Shiny," is minimalist neo-electro pop, closer "Casta Diva" is so abstract its experimental. It possesses a sophisticated, cagey melody that, as it begins asserting itself in the refrain, is suddenly answered by a full choir buoying her. Before it ends, however, the entire track disintegrates into glitch and noise. In advance interviews, Laferte explains that the wide-open nature of her lyric writing and stylistic musical ambitions unite her past and present, thereby making Autopoietica her finest album. Though time will tell if that argument is truly sound, in the short term, her creative ambition musically, lyrically, and in the albums production makes one disinclined to argue. ~ Thom Jurek