On Caos, the adventurous R&B artist calls on his heritage as he processes our brutal reality
The cover of “RIP,” a recent single off Miguel’s fifth album, Caos, depicts the Danza de los Diablos, or Dance of the Devils, and the album it comes on finds the singer folding allusions to his Mexican roots into a moody, visceral version of his always-ambitious alternative R&B. Miguel kick-started his career with his adventurous 2012 debut, Kaleidoscope Dream, an LP that mixed rock, soul, and psychedelia into a freewheeling sound he’s been nuancing ever since, often in music that’s taken on a moodier, more anxious tone. As its title suggests, Caos is an album for our times. “Life is cold/Cold is pain/And pain, growth,” he says mater-of-factly against a distressed-sounding choir at the LP’s opening.
The album has a political edge that’s previously been present in his music. “El Pleito,” which translates to “the fight,” is one of several moments when he sings in Spanish, addressing the immigrant experience over subdued guitar and dramatic strings. “Government’s playing hunger games,” he sings in a forlorn falsetto on “Angel’s Song,” a meditation on his hopes and worries for his newborn son. Titles like “The Killing,” “New Martyrs,” and “Triggered” evoke our current landscape of fear and violence.
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The music is fittingly unsettled and often quite dire. “Nearsight [SID]” opens with a guitar that sounds like its being played at the bottom of the ocean as Miguel sings about facing up to (and trying to tune out) the challenges and realities of life; “Salvation gets bleaker,” he sings, “so let’s make memories tonight,” before the song explodes into speedy, haried punk rock, as if he’s heading for a cliff. “The Killing” starts in a Jimi Hendrix acid-rock implosion and turns into a creeping evocation of violent obsession. On the broodingly intense “New Martyrs,” he plays a gun-toting outlaw (in 2025, the line “I’ll put this mask on my face” evokes ICE raids as much as bank robbing).
Caos isn’t an easy listen, often fading into a bleary haze and not quite coherently fulfilling the implications of its concept. But coherence isn’t really the point here. This is an album about searching for meaning as you try your best to process a world on fire — and it’s a mood that should resonate with any honest listener.
