Album Review: Isabella Lovestory - Amor Hardcore

I think part of the appeal of reggaeton is that it's difficult to over-intellectualize. It has a malleable framework, which makes it compatible with a lot of different styles, but these mashups and amalgamations seem to be primarily led by sonic and aesthetic conciliations rather than philosophical principles. Punk can be that way too. There are definitely interesting ways of approaching and thinking about playing punk rock, but if you forget to get the "feel" right, you haven't made much worth anyone's time. It's this kind of step first and figure out where you're going later approach that compels a lot of exciting art to be made and which I think finds a particularly fascinating forum on Isabella Lovestory's Amor Hardcore. The fashion-conscious, international pop star integrates an array of opposites, from shoegaze to reggaeton, from cross-continental hip hop to murky industrial punk, colliding and submerging them into an outsized outpour of gestural euphoria. Even as she clips and sterilizes, molds and melds together stark and pliant, aching and balmy antipodes, she never loses a sense of where all these disparate influences and cracked details intrinsically fit together. It's both arresting and accommodating- like she's smashed a bunch of vases and then recombined their shards into a ceramic status of a dragon that you can still hold a bouquet for you. That's the trick of Amor Hardcore- there is no trick. It is what it is in its unity of surface-level distinctions, and this surface-level presentation is more informative than an ancillary understanding that you place in its orbit. Just like love, Amor Hardcore reveals itself only in your acceptance of it at face value.