On Half Gringa’s latest album, Cosmovisión, Isabel Olive harnesses her voice as a writer and builds herself up to present her audience with big ideas and their even bigger mythologies and implications. Each song on her third effort feels ever-expanding as we catch a glimpse into Olive’s psyche through these ten striking tracks. These songs are often times abstract, touching on the gravitas of feelings and places that aren’t always rooted in tangibility, but convey the bigger feelings of the human condition. These are ideas that Olive states are often, “too hot to touch, too huge to hold.”

Soundtracked by pianos, strings, and Olive’s higher register, the opening track, “Anywhere You Find Me,” leaves us with a sonic impression that sets the scene for the album’s general sound. Cosmovisión’s musical palette is filled with twangy electric guitars, drums, and strings that highlight the record’s most poignant moments and highest emotional points, like the climax of the aforementioned album opener. She muses, “How can I free myself from despair? How can my despair free me?” Sometimes a song’s instrumentation drops off, only to include these strings and Olive’s vocals, giving us more space to absorb the words with more clarity. 

One of the album’s highlights is the track, “Where You Ride,” which displays some of Olive’s strongest lyricism. This honestly is saying a lot, considering each track on this album contains highly focused, sharp writing that’s often almost literary at times, as the lyrics drive and command the listener’s attention throughout the album’s runtime. With lyrics at the helm, the album’s instrumentation melds around Olive’s words, as they fill the runtime and space of each track fully. In “Where You Ride,” the music bends at her will, binding to the words, as they lead us to the next movement. Towards the middle of the track’s runtime, the song becomes hushed, filled with finger-plucked strings and guitar feedback as Olive delivers the line, “They said my soul was anted eluvium. They ordered their usual and then I replied, ‘that might be true but it only sounds negative coming from you.’” Olive maintains a deep awareness about herself, her surroundings and her emotional interpretation of them. Hearing her rhetorical thoughts throughout the album is a continued treat through lyrics that feel like an immediate, but fully realized response to the forces that attempt to shake her sense of self. 

Even when Olive doesn’t have the words to describe her exact emotion, like she details on “What’s The Word,” she never sounds unsure of herself. The track picks up its pace to a jaunt as she sings overtop electric guitar lines and percussive drum rhythms, “I thought someday it would hurt less, direct address to myself in the mirror.” This song also showcases the bilingual writing of the Venezuelan American singer, as she switches to Spanish for a few of the track’s lines. We also see this on songs like “Supervisión” and the album’s closer, “The Optimist.” Olive’s usage and switching of languages always enhances the song it occurs in, creating a mirror image and an almost call and response aspect to the songs and their structures. The Spanish lines are not simply a translated repetition of the English lines, but entirely separate thoughts that continue the poetry of her writing. 

Cosmovisión as an album gives Isabel Olive the ability to bask in big questions, feelings, and do so utitlizing larger, almost orchestral arrangements that cling to her words and allow them to take the spotlight. It’s an artful and expressive record that allows every feeling to be accounted for and every feeling to be considered, no matter how daunting it may seem. Half Gringa knows the illuminating power of her words, and it’s an honor to witness her showcase them in real time.

You can listen to Cosmovisión out everywhere now, as well as purchase a vinyl or CD via Olive’s own label Teleférico Records.

Written by Helen Howard