Rob’s Album Of The Week: Angelica Garcia’s Cha Cha Palace

The fusing of styles can be a refreshing thing. It’s even better when it’s an artistic cornucopia that makes your mind try to figure out where each element is coming from while you’re listening. Hailing from Richmond, Virginia, Angelica Garcia is accomplishing this in stellar fashion with a sound that mixes indie pop, soul, blues and even a bit of hip hop. This is best exemplified in her debut album, Cha Cha Palace, that came out on February 28 via Spacebomb Records. What makes her debut amazing is how everything sounds different from each other while she puts her own cultural spin on it.

Garcia definitely encompasses her music with a Latin flair. At some points there will be a rhythmic beat with her belting her heart out and it becomes hypnotic. Then at other times there are raw guitar chords giving it a bit of grit and she feeds off of it in an intense way. As each song goes, she’s processing a variety of emotions. It’s a wide-ranging exhibition of both music and the human condition.

Genres coming together to create something original isn’t a new thing. In fact, some people might even consider it to be a tired artistic approach these days. Maybe you can blame the late ’90s nu metal and rap rock for it, people still have a bad taste in their mouth from that era. So how do you keep this approach fresh? Perhaps you can go…