The Last Living Rose possesses one of the most unique sounds I’ve had the fortune of listening to in indie Latin-America, and this time she delights us with her new album, What If I Am The Ghost?. Quoting her Spotify bio, she defines herself as

“…the ghost of a girl you once loved in a dream.”

I couldn’t agree more. She has previously been featured in an interview in this magazine, where she described her style as “haunting, odd, and a bit sad”. Through the fifteen minutes that compose her latest release, The Last Living Rose pushes said style to new horizons.

The opening track, “He’s Gone Away”, opens with layered vocals, buried on top of each other. These long, slow choruses feel angelic, like religious chants, inevitably drawing a connection to the artist’s roots in Evangelical Christianity. A very simple cord progression quickly joins the vocals and it all comes together under the crunchy sounds of old analog tape. The track immediately dictates the mood for the rest of the album: a maximalist, moody work with ambient and acoustic elements. Even though the word “maximalist” seems fitting to describe such a song, it is also tastefully mixed, with conscious restraint over the sounds that she implements. At the end of the day, we’re listening to a track that blurs the line between a haunting melancholy and a present seductiveness.

The song is abruptly interrupted by the second —and personal favorite— track of the album, “The World Is Singing For Me”, in a switch up that feels masterfully intentional. In contrast with “He’s Gone Away”, this second song starts of with a clean, distinctive guitar solo accompanied by the sounds of birds and nature. The vocals soon kick in, shaping this acoustic ballad that enhances what we’re already hearing: the natural world that surrounds us is the true music. Such a beautiful thesis is not only said, but lived, through the sensorial experience that this song offers.

Following tracks from the album emphasize this analog and slightly damaged ambient sound that blends slow melodies with sounds of nature. There’s a lot of texture in the mixing, tying into the themes of time passing and overwhelming botanical life. Tints of acoustic ballad float in and out of the tracks, like a haunting presence that inevitably brings us back to the title and the manifestation of the self as the voice of the artist in the work.

This is an audible introspection through the past and what will be left of living beings beyond human experience once we are gone. Considering the recurrent adjectives that The Last Living Rose uses to describe her sound and herself, I have the impression of a very well-rounded artist that knows what she likes and what she wants to do. Such a distinctive sound is immensely appreciated in times where everything seems to be coming out of an assembly line. Her work feels old, reminiscent of a distant time —or reality? — that is seen through someone else’s memory, and the memory is fading.

Her play on sound and the sensorial experiences it might evoke, connected also to the way words and music converge to spark thoughts, demonstrate how profound and intentional her work is. She embraces the past and the ever-changing times to create a tangible, melancholic future. Understanding the contradictory nature of human creation, that is at the same time incredibly fragile and persistent even long after we’re gone, she begs the question, what if I am the ghost?

You can find The Last Living Rose’s new album “What If I Am The Ghost?”, on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music. If you’d like to follow the artist closer, you can find her on Instagram.