It turns out it’s a bit like following Alice down the Wonderland rabbit hole, as mischief and mayhem come together in some form of twisted harmony with a moral squeezed in for good measure. FREE SPIRITS is that rabbit hole.
First appearing in the late 2010s, the duo – the dark mulleted CA7RIEL and the slick blonde Paco Amoroso – first met as children. Their creative partnership retained a kind of arrested development until the early 2020s, when they went on to explore solo careers on the back of a couple of breakout viral hits, including 2019's bombastic "OUKE".
In 2024, they recombined their solo instincts and influences into a deliberately chaotic, genre-hopping sound with their debut album, BAÑO MARÍA. But it was after a viral NPR Tiny Desk concert also the same year that they were pushed firmly into the zeitgeist.
They then went on to win five Latin Grammys with the jazz-tinged 2025 EP, PAPOTA. Taking a bit of a break after their whirlwind couple of years, the pair retreated in the latter-half of the year. This is where FREE SPIRITS finds its thematic through line. So much so, the visual that follows in the film version is of the pair being sent to a literal retreat with Sting as the sage leader of said facility (a not-totally unrealistic idea, let's be honest).
Sonically, FREE SPIRITS finds CA7RIEL and Paco Amoroso as prospectors panning through the silt of their ego death wreckage for gold nuggets and happening upon a luxuriously decadent reward that revels in its experimentation.
Opening with "Nada Nuevo", which leans into Bollywood rhythms that build their urgency with cinematic flourish, into the whiplash-inducing, Bossa-nova soaked – and Jack Black featuring – “Goo Goo Ga Ga”, which is very much not filmic, these both feel like sonic palate cleansers – and if you reach "No Me Sirve Más", this is a wonderland very much for you.
Leaning more into bachata and synthetic beats from hereon, “Ay Ay Ay” (featuring Anderson .Paak) picks up the pace as Brazilian batucada beats sparkle, before the outro melts into something more wholly trippy.
But the sonics on display are only half the story. This is an album about rehabilitation, and confronting those sins that led to this burnout. They ruminate on the likes of the blandness of modern culture ("Nada Nuevo"), lust ("Ay, Ay, Ay!", "Soy Increíble"), greed (“Lo Quireo Ya !”), but each comes with a deeply vulnerable vein that bleeds into the joyous latin sounds and bacchanalian trip-hop. Even "Goo Goo Ga Ga" hosts some deep introspection, as Amoroso perkily sings, "My youth is gone / I don't know if I made the most of it."
Throughout, there's an unease that shimmers. Even as the midway point “Hasta Jesús Tuvo un Mal Dia” finds Sting singing “Even Jesus had his bad days” in the English-language bridge of the track, "Ha Ha" immediately reverts into dissecting anxiety dreams soundtracked by a wicked collision of R&B verses and EDM choruses.
Ending with the sparse, Fred again…-featuring rapture “Lo Quireo Ya !”, it feels more akin to a lost night on the dance floor as the world spirals around you. It’s an exquisite end that packs in the nitty-gritty of the journey its auteurs have been in since being flung into the never-ending spotlight.
FREE SPIRITS brilliantly represents the pairs growth into themselves and into the reality around them. It’s as playful as you’d expect – the features all doing their part to add to the dizzying hold on to actuality – but beneath the smirk lies something more deliberate. While CA7RIEL and Paco Amoroso continue channeling their weirdness and individuality into the long-game of finding a new, better reality after reckoning with the toughest opponent of all – the self.
