Earlier than the Puerto Rican duo Buscabulla made their new album Se Amaba Así, they’d gone by means of a whirlwind interval of ups and downs. Again in 2020, they launched their breakthrough LP Regresa, a beautiful rumination of life of their native Puerto Rico, the place they moved in 2017 from New York. Regresa was met with tons of vital acclaim and consideration — and then the world shut down.
Buscabulla, made up of creative and romantic companions Luis Alfredo Del Valle and Raquel Berrios, who’ve been collectively for a decade, managed to do a lot throughout the pandemic, releasing gorgeous movies and visible ideas for Regresa. However the truth that they couldn’t exit and tour the file made their profession progress actually troublesome. “We felt this lull of not having the ability to promote the album and we have been hitting a bizarre level of, ‘Rattling, we’ve got to make one other mission now,’” Berrios explains. “However we hadn’t seen any kind of substantial positive factors as a result of it was the entire pandemic. Luis and I have been feeling like, ‘Are we going to have to do one thing else?’ Issues have been so bleak.”
“You put a lot work into a file and then it comes out on this the weirdest setting,” Del Valle provides. “After which, like, a 12 months goes by and you’re nonetheless form of in your own home. So it was like, ‘I don’t know, perhaps we gotta attempt one thing else.’”
Nonetheless, in April 2021, proper on Easter, they obtained an surprising name: It was Dangerous Bunny. “I at all times inform the story, like ‘The Bunny referred to as on Easter Sunday,’” Berrios says with a chortle. “What’s wild is that he stated, ‘You know, all I did was hear to your file whereas I used to be like an isolation.’” Dangerous Bunny shared that Regresa had touched him deeply, and finally, he requested the duo be part of him on a music referred to as “Andrea,” from his record-breaking album Un Verano Sin Ti. A lot of the dreamy observe, about a girl discovering her personal autonomy in Puerto Rico, will get its breeziness from Berrios’ hushed vocals, and it struck a chord at a time when the island has grappled with femicides and violence towards girls. “Andrea” grew to become an emotional favourite on Un Verano Sin Ti, and it at the moment has 550 million streams on Spotify. The gates crashed open for Buscabulla.
“All of a sudden, this explosion got here,” Berrios recollects. “We obtained the chance to actually play, and we performed all over the place: We did a U.S. tour, we performed in Colombia, we did a lot.” But all of it — the rollercoaster highs and lows, the touring, the hectic boom-and-bust cycles of music — started tugging on the seams of their tight-knit partnership. “I feel that with a lot of the craziness that was taking place, Luis and I have been all additionally feeling it in our personal relationship. I imply, we’ve been doing this now for greater than 10 years, our band and being in a relationship. And it was simply a lot. It actually took a toll on us, and we simply determined to write about it.”
What began pouring out grew to become Se Amaba Así, a profoundly private portrait of their romance and their relationship as artists, companions, and mother and father. (They have an 11-year-old daughter collectively.) It’s way more intense and intimate than any of Buscabulla’s previous work, whereas nonetheless remaining sonically adventurous and surprising. “It’s a file about us,” Del Valle says. “It’s a file about our struggles as individuals to keep collectively. And it’s one in all this stuff the place you’ve got all this nervousness since you’re actually placing your self on the road in a very possible way.”
Berrios was focused on all of the methods love and connection have morphed in immediately, with fixed distractions and digital overload. “We reside in a post-romantic period — I feel it’s the overflow of data and all the things being so clear that has kind of killed thriller and the hazard of affection and romance,” she says. To actually interrogate love immediately, the band went again in time to look at these ideas over the generations. “In our album, we actually take a look at our personal historical past, our mother and father, our tradition, and the kind of conditioning of how romance works in Puerto Rico and in Latin America.” That formed a sonic tapestry that defies particular genres or time durations. Songs like “Mi Marido” and the title observe “Se Amaba Así” seize the high-drama and theatrics of previous balladeers in Latin music historical past with out ever feeling apparent. (Berrios shares that the over-the-top Eighties brother-sister duo Pimpinela was a main inspiration.) “Te Fuiste,” with its skittering digital spirit, and “El Camino,” the primary single that stews and slowly builds, are refreshingly trendy and laborious to pin down.
At one level, the band thought-about making Se Amaba Así a two-sided LP, with six songs chronicling Del Valle’s experiences and six songs detailing Berrios’. Del Valle shied away from the concept a bit: “I used to be like, ‘I don’t need to have a couple’s argument on the file!” he says with a chortle. The mission ended up being rather more of a seamless dialog, however nonetheless filled with moments of open-hearted vulnerability that target every perspective. On “El Empuje,” for instance, Del Valle strikes into the forefront, stepping from his normal place as a producer and instrumentalist to take the mic. By aching vocals, he sings in regards to the push-and-pull within the relationship, describing acute ache: “With all of your anger and all of your wounds, You need to undergo and make me undergo.”
Del Valle admits it wasn’t straightforward to put all of it on the market. “I felt that hesitation, for certain, as a result of at the least on my finish, I don’t really feel like I’ve uncovered myself in that means earlier than,” he explains. “However I like artists who’re sincere, and I’ve to give credit score to Raquel, as a result of she was ballsy sufficient to say, ‘Let’s do that.’” Berrios remembers being floored by “El Empuje”: “It’s saying, ‘That is laborious. I can’t take the push.’ And I’m right here kind of witnessing what he’s going by means of,” she says. “I really like that music a lot, and it stings, however on the identical time, I’m like, ‘Man you wrote a actually good music.’”
Finally, the method of a lot honesty, publicity, and bloodletting in entrance of the world led to catharsis, whilst Buscabulla navigates what’s subsequent for them. However what they hope is that Se Amaba Así opens a dialog for individuals grappling with their very own complicated emotions and understandings of affection and connection. “After I take into consideration this file, at first, I used to be like, ‘Why are you going to be so dangerous? And why would you like to discuss one thing so intimate?’” Berrios says. “However then I felt like, ‘Possibly we may help individuals.’ Possibly it’s by means of our personal expertise that folks can actually see themselves. The main target of this file is basically form of therapeutic — and I hope individuals actually replicate on how they love.”
