Seen from afar, coverage of Madrid’s trebly, chrome-coated experimental pop scene appears dominated by Rusia-IDK, the five-member boys’ club formed in 2019 that counts Ralphie Choo and Rusowsky among its marquee names. AMORE, aka Murcia’s 25-year-old María Moreno Martinez, has been active for almost as long; her body of work is a similarly genre-omnivorous playground where flamenco, hip-hop, glitchcore, and Latin folk are all fair game. In a short film accompanying her new Top Hits, Ballads, etc…, a dozen women participate in a strange silent disco on a smoke-filled soundstage. This video, like the record, takes place at the intersection of high concept and limited resources; listening to Top Hits, one pictures the neon lines of gaffer’s tape on the floor. If Choo is the mad scientist, AMORE is the performance artist offering an X-ray view into her process.
From title onward, Top Hits, Ballads, etc… registers more like a compilation than a proper debut. “Last Maria on Earth” and “Querió,” each more than a year old, mark the album’s two furthest musical poles. “Last Maria” is strummy indie rock graced by a fluttering flute and Martínez’s ethereal vocals, while the castanets and syncopated jota rhythms of “Querió” situate it in a lineage of contemporary takes on traditional Spanish folk. The entirety of Top Hits hovers well above 70 Hz—nothing here truly throbs or wobbles. “I Gotta Feeling” wants to be nothing short of your next Black Eyed Peas-sized bar mitzvah banger, but lands on Neptunes-lite as Martínez and producer Dinamarca muster up a pixelated elysium of finger-snaps, flutes, and taffy-pulled basslines with plenty of room to breathe.
Much of Top Hits ostensibly chronicles a queer breakup; as the guitar balladry of “Amiga” glitches in and out of focus, Martínez recalls “una amiga/Y aunque no la cuidé como debía/Se convirtió en mi dulce compañía” (“a friend/And even though I didn’t care for her like I should have/She became my sweet company”). In the last minute, “Amiga” flips into its own self-contained remix, slicing her voice into silky ribbons over a muted kick drum. Amid the hypnotic ghungroos bells of “Peléame!!!,” an angelic host of AMOREs command a lover to “fight me, light it up”; a few tracks later she’s hitting bottom again. The playful groove of “Delirio”—a baby Pokémon evolution on from the skeletal reggaeton experiments of Rosalía’s MOTOMAMI—belies Martínez’s lyrics, which compare her love to “una prisión” (a prison), “un castigo” (a punishment), “[una] maldición” (a curse). And like any good telenovela, there’s only one way this story can end: with a gunshot.
This might suggest that Top Hits is all high drama, but Martínez is incapable of total self-seriousness. “Juvenil” ends on a scattering of canned applause; “Amore I,” a collaboration with Toronto-based producer Loukeman, is circled by chiptune cherubs; interlude “dont mess with mr in-between” draws on synth presets straight out of C418’s Minecraft soundtrack. The field’s wide open and certain songs still feel unformed; “Evangelion” begins as a dreamy Julee Cruise waltz but proceeds as though someone forgot to toggle off the loop button. Though closer to a collection of demos, Top Hits, Ballads, etc… is a delightfully half-baked proof of concept. The ellipsis says it all: not a best-of, just a best-so-far.
