A lot has happened since Miguel released his 2017 album War & Leisure, a deft mix of electro-laced R&B, Rock and Funk that cemented the California native as a worthy disciple of Prince.
Trump 1.0, Black Lives Matter, the COVID pandemic, the separation from his longtime partner, the birth of his first child, Trump 2.0 and more couldn’t help but alter Miguel’s headspace over the last eight years. Cue his long-gestating fifth album, CAOS, which dropped last October to a curiously muted response. (For context, he released four albums between 2010 and 2017, less time than it took for CAOS to surface.)
The measured reaction to Miguel’s latest isn’t a surprise — it’s darker and more ominous than anything he’s yet produced, the sound of a man at a crossroads. Album opener “CAOS,” which is Spanish for chaos, is an intriguing mélange of Miguel’s signature sensuous elements (penetrating falsetto vocals and Latin-flavored acoustic guitar) with dense beats and dark-hued atmospherics accentuated by one of the few lyrics sung in English, “I’m inches from a sabotage.”
The next song, “The Killing,” opens with dirge-like menace, a metaphorical scene setter for an extinguished relationship despite likeminded sexual proclivities.
“This album has a much more aggressive, angsty outlook, not necessarily in the sound, but definitely in the lyrics,” Miguel said in a recent interview with Grammy.com. “There’s a raw honesty running through it, a kind of underlying tension that comes from confronting what’s no longer working. It reflects the evolution of my internal operating systems, learning to face the broken parts of myself head on instead of avoiding them.”
The sounds on CAOS are in fact grittier and more experimental, marked by electric guitars that dip into psychedelia and unexpected, frequently discordant rhythms.
“Nearsight (SID)” is perhaps the best example of Miguel’s current melding of introspection and sonic restlessness — it’s an ambient, slow-burning look at how transcendental meditation has altered its often-indulgent creator’s life before jump-cutting in the final third via driving drums and an urgent vocal delivery.
It culminates with this statement of intent: “Breathe it in now/Let me meditate/We going in now/Till you levitate.”
This article appears in Feb. 18-March 3.