Album of the week (July 22, 2019)

11 de Novembre by Sílvia Pérez Cruz (Spain)

Over the past decade, Catalan vocalist Silvia Pérez Cruz has lent her delicate voice to a wide variety of projects (most notably with her band las Migas), but 11 de Novembre is her first proper solo album.

Also for the first time, Pérez Cruz composed and arranged all the material, and co-produced the album with Raúl Fernández Refree. Pérez Cruz’s effortless eclecticism breezes through songs that touch on folk, acoustic jazz, fado, flamenco, Cuban, and Brazilian music, without losing her own identity.

She is equally at ease singing in four different languages (Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, Galician), or setting poems by Feliu Formosa, Maria Mercè Marçal, and Maria Cabrera to music.

A deeply personal, beautiful album dedicated to the singer’s father, who had recently passed away