Raquel Berrios and Luis Alfredo Del Valle do not disappoint. The electro-glazed dream pop duo known as Buscabulla’s latest is an overdue follow-up to their tantalizing EP II, and our first peep at their official debut album, due 2020. Carried by a rhythmic pounding of the timbales, the track has an entrancing and soothing effect.
After a time of mass-exodus to the mainland following Hurricane Maria, the formerly Brooklyn-based duo went home. They moved back to Puerto Rico February 2018, a year after the release of their sophomore EP, and a little more than a year after the sweeping natural disaster.
The video’s silent beginning sets the scene. It’s the eve before they leave New York (perhaps for good) and Berrios is dreaming of what’ll come, in a reverie that fuses the future, past, and present, with memories of both her and her partner’s traditions of home. References to Puerto Rican carnavals, namely el Festival de Las Mascaras de Hatillo, with references to the vejigante’s colors and ruffled, ornate ensembles. The continued celebration of the amalgam of traditions depicted are a form of “celebratory resistance,” the duo says.
Directed by Claudia Calderon, the video’s visuals make it an essential viewing for the song. From its bright nature, to the Miss Liberty’s brief appearance, it’s a captivating play on one’s senses and emotions. The full scope and messaging of the song, simplistic in lyrical depth, lives between the lines.
In the video’s final scene, the real-life couple stands at El Cementerio Municipal de Arecibo, in front of headstones with their names on them. The cemetery, Raquel tells Remezcla, is where her grandmother, great-grandmother, and other ancestors are buried. “Most of them lived in New York for a while and then returned back to the island to live out the rest of their lives.” Perhaps this is their way of declaring their commitment to doing the same.
“Uno que se viene, otro que se va,” she and her longtime partner sing in the song’s outro. Some come, others go. But their message to Puerto Ricans watching this from afar is clear, spelled out on the top cover of their float: Regresa.
Watch the full video here: