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Las Robertas: California Flower Power Via Costa Rica

Las Robertas' latest album is <em>Waves Of The New</em>.
Jaime Fernandez Diaz
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Courtesy of the artist
Las Robertas' latest album is Waves Of The New.

Las Robertas' trippy noise-pop garage-rock took the international music scene by storm in 2010, and the band, led by Mercedes Oller, quickly became a darling on the indie festival circuit in Europe as well as the Americas. Now back with a new lineup and a third full-length album, Waves of The New, Las Robertas serves up a sunny set of tunes tinged with surf-rock and psychedelia and surrounded by its hallmark sylphic vocals — all with a retro feel that starts in the '60s and '70s but definitely doesn't stay there.

The new album shows a maturing of the slightly distorted, vintage garage sound that made Las Robertas a musical referent in its homeland of Costa Rica. Oller and Sonya Carmona's ethereal vocals swirl decidedly about the former's elegant shoegaze guitar chords and the latter's classic-rock bass lines, all grounded and propelled by the krautrocky beats of drummer Fabrizio Durán.

"California Feeling" embodies perfectly all of these vibes — and, as with many of the songs on Waves Of The New, also reflects that the album was recorded in San Diego. With each turn of the kaleidoscope, Las Robertas' music shape-shifts to offer new ways to hear its bright, hypnotic sounds. It's a magical mosaic that dazzles, delights and — as the song says — takes us on a road trip in the sun so the wind can make us whole and we can "cross the glow."


Waves of the New is out now via Buen Día Records and Bandcamp.

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