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As Empress Of, Lorely Rodriguez has spent the past decade moving between punchy, upbeat synth-pop and introspective ballads with unselfconscious ease. Even when she’s leaned toward more mainstream pop, as on 2022’s Save Me EP, the Honduran American producer and singer-songwriter’s key influences have shined through. Whether she’s channeling the vertiginous serenades of Cocteau Twins or the contorted stylings of Imogen Heap, her catalog bursts with fizzy, unpredictable love songs in English and Spanish, which have landed her spots opening for pop stars like Carly Rae Jepsen and Rina Sawayama. On her fourth album, the independently released For Your Consideration, Rodriguez dials into an insatiable new groove, reprising an effusive, sensual point of view over propulsive dance and electropop. It’s the most intricate Empress Of album to date, a dazzling showcase for Rodriguez’s unexpected vocal and production approach as she experiences the peaks and valleys of heated romance.Rodriguez executive-produced For Your Consideration and tapped a fleet of other rising songwriters and producers to assist, including Casey MQ, Umru, Cecile Believe, and Nick León. The diverse spread helps map out the album’s mischievously unpredictable backdrops: These songs corkscrew and pull Rodriguez’s vocals like taffy, twisting into structures of their own; it’s as if she took Björk’s Medúlla as a conceptual north star and ran with it at full speed to the club. An opening suite of whispers morphs into a pitch-shifted pattern on the seductive “Sucia,” whose bilingual singsong verses lead to a deliciously bawdy chorus, her voice rising to a vibrant whoop. Later, her backing vocals swarm into a more ominous, chittering turn on the standout “Preciosa,” adding texture to the song’s deep bass and passionate come-ons. “Entra a mi mar/Mójate ya/Ya tú verás/Que te enamoras” (Enter my sea/Get wet/You’ll see that you’ll fall in love) she sings gently, before her voice crumples into a cooing, stuttering rhythm.For Your Consideration thrives on the elasticity of the human voice, while its lyrics turn from underhanded lovers to the flush of new affairs. Gasps and hiccups shape the fricative beat on the tender opening title track, which dissects a series of red flags, letting her words linger with fading desire. Here she riffs on the awards-season “for your consideration” campaigns that actors and directors run as a metaphor for an unbalanced relationship; the line, repeated during the chorus, takes on a pleading tone that slowly grows more steely with confidence. “You wrote the script,” she allows, coming to the realization with sharp lucidity. “Your words, not mine.”
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