For more than a decade, Brooklyn-based artist Roberto Carlos Lange has crafted down-home pop music as Helado Negro. Each of his seven albums has shown a graceful evolution of his sonic palette, introducing scrappy psych-folk excursions, midtempo synth-pop odysseys, and other elements, but they’re all connected by an overarching gentleness at their core. Lange’s music is so inviting that every record becomes an opportunity to listen closely and feel the refinement in his sunlit aesthetics, in his cozy singing, or in his understanding of his Latino identity. Lange’s latest album, last year’s Far In (4AD), continues this trajectory with its loving invitation to examine and appreciate life’s curiosities. On “There Must Be a Song Like You,” he considers the impossibility of defining a person, using a slick bass groove to capture the slipperiness (and the comfort) of being hard to pin down. Lange takes that theme even further on “Hometown Dream,” a long-form dance track about moving from city to city and understanding one’s time on earth as a journey of unceasing growth. Drenched in wistful nostalgia and forward-looking bliss, it’s one of most mesmerizing songs on the album.
Despite the laid-back feel of Far In, every element of the album is carefully considered. When Lange sings in Spanish on “Aguas Frías,” the language’s phonology and rhythmic meter align with its dreamy arrangement. The vocal melodies are the most striking element of every Helado Negro album, and on Far In they largely avoid huge interval jumps to ensure the listener is constantly submerged in the songs’ humid atmospheres. Even on boisterous cuts such as “Outside the Outside,” Lange’s hushed vocals (which recall Arthur Russell’s) remain tender and intimate, in short phrases that match the bubbly synths. The wordless, repeated two-bar vocal melody on album highlight “Agosto” reminds me of waking up to birdcalls: calm and simple, it’s a reminder of the joy in small beauties. Lange recently dropped a new single, the gauzy “Ya No Estoy Aquí,” which feels like being wrapped in blankets. His Thalia Hall concert should be just as nourishing as those simple pleasures.
Helado Negro, Slauson Malone 1 , Mon 5/9, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $25-$32, 17+
The post Helado Negro’s down-home pop is as invigorating as it is intimate appeared first on Chicago Reader.