Carmina Alegría is the loving, experimental tribute to his grandmother by Spanish artist Yo.

By Graeme Smith

Yo, named for the Spanish first-person singular pronoun, is the project of Valencia-based musician and writer David G. Borrero. His latest record is one born from grief and is a narrative arc celebrating his grandmother after her death.

Doña Carmina looms large over the entire record, not just in its story and themes, but in her presence. Snippets of her fluid voice can be heard in several of the tracks, lending the concept a ghostliness but also a sense of life. Even those of us who don’t speak Spanish get a sense of the wisdom in her words.

There’s plenty of Borrero in the record too. He has an easy command of genre and isn’t afraid to mix it up across the album’s eight tracks. We experience a seamless blend of post-rock in tracks like opener Desaparecer and the expansive Los Muertos siempre son Verdad, folk and neoclassical in Siempre (la mano en el fuego), and some cinematic soundtracking in the meditative Coágulo de un instante and cosmic, operatic Volver al aire.

Title track Carmina Alegría proves an early highlight through its minimalistic instrumentation and overlapping snatches of voice. There’s a brightness to it that makes it feel like a celebration, but also an undercurrent of poignancy.

The album closes at its most Avant Garde in the brooding Decirlo a veces sin palabras and the epilogue bonus track Levantando las manos. The latter cuts deepest through a combination of rousing piano and heartbreaking vocals.

Regular readers will know how much a love an experimental project, so that’s clearly what drew me to Yo’s Carmina Alegría. Yet, it’s not just a case of being simply different or trying to break the mould. Yo has truly made a record full of depth, emotion, life, and grief that proves fully captivating from start to finish. He’s not just an artist, he’s an architect building stories with sound.

Yo may literally mean ‘I’ when translated to English, but in the Spanish language, it means much more than that. It’s a declaration, an affirmation, and David G. Borrero embodies the concept perfectly.

I can’t recommend him enough. If you want to keep up to date with Yo, you can check out his website, and follow him on Spotify, Soundcloud, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

Carmina Alegría is out now, and you can listen to it below.

Supported by Musosoup #SustainableCurator