Maria Usbeck

Albums by Maria Usbeck unfold like the pages of a travel diary. Inspired and informed by her childhood in South America, her young adult life in New York City, and her many world travels in between, it’s music made by a visiting outsider, tapping into a shared core of human expression. Usbeck’s story goes like this: Born in Quito, Ecuador, she moved to the states at 17 to attend art school, and found herself fronting the new wave band Selebrities. After five years of singing in English, the polyglot decided to let her mother tongue speak. Amparo, Usbeck’s 2016 solo debut, was a return to her Latin American roots, sung almost entirely in Spanish, written and recorded across Ecuador, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Barcelona, Lisbon, Easter Island, Costa Rica, Florida, L.A. and her home in Brooklyn. Usbeck now returns with her sophomore album, Envejeciendo, a collection of songs three years in the making. Titled for the Spanish word for “aging,” Envejeciendo explores Maria’s first-hand experience with getting older, filtered through her personal kaleidoscope of world textures and dreamlike narratives. The resulting record is an eccentric collection of Spanglish synth-pop, sun-dappled and mirror-polished, out of place and time.