Review: Cuco’s Para Mi Is an Unguarded but Under-Developed Self-Portrait

The singer-songwriter’s guileless musings serve as a reminder of what young, unjaded love can feel like.

Cuco
Photo: Interscope Records

Since Omar Banos first broke out in 2016, the Chicano musician’s foremost appeal has always been his ordinariness. Fresh-faced and bespectacled, the 21-year-old—who performs under the moniker Cuco—cuts an unassuming, almost nerdy figure, and his music, driven by his trademark self-deprecation and endless encounters with heartbreak, is ever so relatable. Although his early mixtapes drifted into garden-variety indie-pop territory, Cuco harnesses his potential on Para Mi, an unguarded self-portrait that, from its unabashed confessionalism to its Spanglish lyrics, is inextricably tied to his identity.

The album exhibits Cuco’s fondness for melding the contemporary with the vintage. Like that of bedroom-pop cohorts Joji and Clairo, his music bears the influence of vaporwave. Thick walls of synth fill the album, and the cover art is awash in the garish colors that characterize the microgenre. Likewise, it’s difficult to imagine Cuco’s music without the sway of 1960s pop: His lyrics are bathed in the love-struck stylings of acts like the Beach Boys and Tijuana’s Los Moonlights, and the result is a lovesick concoction that’s both forlorn and tripped-out. With lyrics like “I wish you would say/‘Baby, I love you ‘til I die” on “Hydrocodone,” he risks drowning in melodrama, but his earnestness ultimately manages to strike a resounding chord. Sure, he equates heartbreak to the end of the world, but in spite of their hyperbole, Cuco’s guileless musings serve as a reminder of what young, unjaded love can feel like.

Throughout Para Mi, Cuco dives headfirst into psychedelia, using it as a prompt to try on more experimental sounds, as well as a lens through which to observe his personal feelings. The dazzling “Perihelion (Interlude)” takes a page out of Neon Indian’s Vega Intl. Night School, and the blissful “Love Tripper” owes a great deal to chillwave. “I’ve been tripping off the tabs in my room/I don’t know why, baby, but I’m feeling blue,” he half-raps over zany music box-like synths on “Keeping Tabs.” On “Feelings,” Cuco embraces feeling lost: “I gotta find my way back home,” he croons over a silky blanket of horn, synth, and funk bass. Whereas the album’s love songs hit on the same thematic beats over and over, these more introspective tracks buzz with intrigue. It’s a pity, then, that there aren’t that many of them.

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Self-deprecation is undoubtedly Cuco’s most distinctive artistic trait. (His Twitter handle is @Icryduringsex.) Songs like “Hydrocodone,” with such lyrics as “There’s always someone better/I hope you find that guy/To make you happy,” evoke a naked sincerity. Instead of coming off as pouty or thin-skinned, however, Cuco’s confessions succeed for the same reason that sad online culture thrives. Airing out the skeletons in one’s closet serves a purpose: There’s something palliative about sharing pain publically and feeling like you’re not the only one, be it through a tweet, a “same” comment, or, well, a crowd chanting “I’m sitting in my room/I’m all alone now missing you” at a Cuco concert.

Though the better part of Para Mi was ostensibly written with romantic interests in mind, the songs, so anchored to fixed experiences, have come to represent universal lessons learned. They’re still rough around the edges—many lack dynamism, fading in and out of monochrome synth passages—but the impression that Cuco put all of himself into the music remains.

Score: 
 Label: Interscope  Release Date: July 26, 2019  Buy: Amazon

Sophia Ordaz

Sophia Ordaz was the editor in chief of The Echo. Her writing has also appeared in Spectrum Culture.

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