Chicago quartet Divino Niño started out playing distinctive-enough psychedelic garage-pop. With Foam, their first proper full-length after a couple of demo compilations, they forge a richer and more inventive sound. Their squiggly, retro-futurist approach borrows freely but selectively from among a vast pop-rock songbook, the psychedelic explorations of the past, and more recent internet subgenres. This is a collection of sweet, brightly colored love songs from the mind of an acid enthusiast, woven from a small used record store’s worth of influences.
The opening space-lounge fantasias of “Foam” and the Wurlitzer-festooned “Quiero” represent new territory for the band, and though they toy with different styles, they resist flattening music history into mere aesthetic. Songs like the relentlessly tuneful “Melty Caramelo” sound like singles from an especially quirky boy band, but Foam has the energy and anything-goes sense of adventure of early-2000s indie rock. These blithe melodies and lightly carbonated hooks could click into place on any number of Spotify playlists, yet remain subtly, irreducibly weird.
“Ooh la la” backing vocals notwithstanding, Foam is a progressive-minded record. If its references are nostalgic, its spirit isn’t. The band has assembled their touchstones with a connoisseur’s ear and the streaming era’s egalitarian approach: All sounds may be selected to serve the needs of the moment. With a killer mid-tempo chorus and lightheaded glide guitar, the strangely affecting “Coca Cola” sounds like a ’70s AM radio hit by way of post-punk. “Cosmic Flower” plants fibrous roots in British Invasion-era rock as it sways in a vaporwave breeze. The band’s garage foundation shows up now and again, especially on the all-Spanish “Maria,” and though it anchors their music nicely, Foam is more like soft art rock. There is no real kitsch, just cheery, artful clutter.
Two of Divino Niño’s founding members, guitarist Camilo Medina and bassist Javier Forero, are originally from Bogotá, Colombia. It’s tempting to connect the band’s romantic lyrics and soulful melodicism to the lineage of U.S. Latino rock pioneers such as Thee Midniters, or classic South American pop groups like Los Pasteles Verdes. But if their background shows up in their music—outside of Medina’s casual shifts between English and Spanish—it is most likely found in their wide palette of influences: everything from Roberto Carlos to Brandy.
Foam demonstrates that it’s possible to draw from everywhere, without sounding quite like anything else. With so much music so freely available, it’s easy to get lost in the noise, to fall back on a too-familiar sound from the ocean of possible influence. Divino Niño navigate expertly against the tide.
Buy: Rough Trade
