Lucrecia Dalt – A Danger to Ourselves
Colombian experimental musician Lucrecia Dalt returns with an avant-pop opus that blurs the line between inner turmoil and arthouse horror
From El Boraro, the vampiric demon on 2018’s Anticlines, to Petra, the alien observer of 2022’s ¡Ay!, Lucrecia Dalt often uses fictional personas to explore complex themes and emotions in her work. However, with A Danger to Ourselves, she sheds the chrysalis of these alter-egos to emerge with her most personal record yet. The title, borrowed from David Sylvian’s lyrics on opener cosa rara, hints at the album’s preoccupations; emotional volatility, self-sabotage, and the uneasy pull between intimacy and annihilation. It’s Dalt at her most exposed, and somehow, her most inscrutable.
On divina, you sense this newfound vulnerability as she sings about improbable love against a backdrop of staccato piano and the sharp, syncopated sound of snapping fingers. Elsewhere, Alex Lázaro’s junkyard percussion makes tracks like mala sangre, the common reader (featuring Argentinian singer-songwriter Juana Molina) and no death no danger quiver with malicious intent, sounding like a cross between a spaghetti western and a psychological horror, shot through with shards of bolero, salsa and mambo. Dalt has recently scored several horror films, and A Danger to Ourselves feels influenced by this mode; a cinematic exploration of the self that reveals the human psyche as a strange and uncanny landscape.
Listen to: divina, no death no danger, the common reader