Like many artists at the height of the pandemic, Divino Niño found solace in the unfamiliar. The Chicago-based quintet, who have roots across Latin America, set out on a voyage, entering a 10-day lockdown in a Wisconsin cabin with only booze and barely fleshed-out ideas for new material in tow. “It felt so apocalyptic, what we were experiencing in that cabin,” guitarist and vocalist Camilo Medina said in a recent interview. The rest of the band also had doomsday dread on the mind; the unease allowed them to embrace a flood of new influences, like a journal stacked with sometimes illegible stream-of-consciousness reflections.
The result is far from the psychedelic garage-pop of their debut album Foam. On the group’s second record, Last Spa On Earth, they harness high doses of electro-house, hyperpop, and—most importantly—experimental reggaeton. Not every Latine indie band could execute this mission effectively, but Divino Niño aren’t afraid to take risks. The record is a bold statement on artistic freedom and the complexity of cultural identity, one that displays the creative promise of emancipating yourself from imagined limits of all kinds. It’s not easy, nor is it always done cohesively, but the mere attempt makes it a worthwhile challenge.
This time around, Divino Niño record almost entirely in their native tongue, a choice that allows this offbeat union of sounds and stories to feel somewhat more consistent. On “XO,” a subtle, slow-building synth line wanes as booming dembow riddims send you directly to the dance floor. The influence of reggaeton fully takes shape on “Tu Tonto,” which borrows the punk grit of neoperreo, a woman-led subgenre piloted by rebels Tomasa del Real and Ms Nina. It’s a colorful manifestation of how synth pop and neoperreo can harmoniously coexist.
On “Miami,” the reggaeton recedes and the band leverages snappy, ’80s-inspired synth pop production over Auto-Tuned vocals, a transition that feels a little rushed. Midway through, edgy vaporwave tones cut the song like a knife, and the lyrics get lost in the shadows. The overuse of club music tempos, the kind you might hear at 3 a.m. in the streets of Bogotá, don’t necessarily match the rest of the multidimensional sounds the band collects here, and the clashing combination is tough to ignore.
Yet the passionately intimate songs make up for the sporadic use of these genres—“Ecstasy” conjures a melancholy kind of sparkle over a twinkling synth-pop production. And while not everything feels divinely connected from start to finish, there’s a sense of self-awareness here, a dedication to seek renewal in the unknown that allows Divino Niño to buck any preconceptions of cultural identity.
