ALBUM REVIEW: LOMA SUYO – PALOMA

Loma Suyo is a musical project of Liz Fullerton and Ish Quintero who met in the underground and trip-hop scene of Philadelphia but on Paloma they mix Latin folk traditions with Americana. The album has an uplifting feeling that picks you up and gently skips and shuffles you along its ten tracks.

I was captivated from the first bars of the opening track ‘Gavilán’, a song inspired by watching red-tailed hawks circle above a meadow. The track features bounce from a mbira thumb piano and the flute like trills of the gaita a traditional wind instrument originally made from cactus stems and beeswax and designed to capture the sounds of nature. This syncopated combination is the perfect backdrop for the warm sound and fluid cadence of Liz Fullerton’s vocals. It’s not hard to imagine the cries of the hawks as they wheel overhead and feel the breeze that is keeping them aloft.

The album contains a catalogue of so many perfect moments, like finding an archipelago of beautiful islands in a crystal-clear sea. There’s the wash of reverb at the end of lines on ‘Tiempo al la Soledad’, the fairground fun and trumpets on ‘Olor De Tu Tierra’ (see the live video below), Quintero’s fabulous guitar chords and tight vocal harmonies on ‘Loca Por Ti’, the crinkle of banjo on ‘La Caridad’, the music box backing that appears halfway through ‘Colibri’ (reminiscent of Björk’s album Vespertine), and the bubbling oud that swirls around the vocals on ‘Have’.

Instrumentally, the more familiar mix of nylon and electric guitar, bass and synthesiser are joined by a wonderful supporting cast of instruments such as the aforementioned gaita, and the West African ngoni, the mbira thumb piano, harmonica, saz, the small scale soprano tipple guitar, oud, and the ukulele-sized charango a member of the lute family. This means there are plenty of sounds to keep your brain fizzing with happy little bursts of dopamine.

While we still have the summer months this album would perfectly compliment the warm days and nights but in winter you could save on your heating bill by putting it on and reliving the summer heat. Paloma is gently life-affirming, an album that doesn’t cajole but lifts you up to swoop and soar like the hawks that inspired ‘Gavilan’.