Kristen Castro Charts New Constellations with New Album "Capricorn Baby"

Kristen Castro's album Capricorn Baby is an audio sculpture etched in the sky--a record that is both heavenly and worldly. She sings on all levels: she composed all lyrics, built all melodies, and created the soundscapes that provide the record with its rhythm. By performing all of these functions, she brings the totality of her artistry before listeners--singer, producer, engineer, and narrator--all of them woven together flawlessly.

What echoes through Capricorn Baby is the spirit of transformation that runs through it. With five years of toil, adversity, and re-birth hanging in the balance, the recordings are weighted with the intensity of hard-won wisdom and triumph through freedom gained. There is courage, and unyielding, unflinching toughness--refusal to turn one's face away from change or dilute its effect. Castro has said the project is a paean to learning to trust her own instincts, and that trust hums through the music like a deathless, slow-smoldering flame. 

Musically, the record reconciles Castro's Latinx roots, Nashville storytelling sensibilities, and Southern California languor and co-mingles them in a palette of dreamworld hues. Ambient vistas roll by alongside fragile ballads, and introspective anthems return the listener to beat and fulfillment. These tunes such as "Amsterdam" and "Summer Rain" bloom with feeling, heat, and climate, and "Capricorn Baby," a duet with The Weepies' Deb Talan, is a lake of friendship and shared heart. There's a song for every room in a house of memory constructed out of hope, yearning, and remembering.

Capricorn Baby refuses to apologize for being human--a sound map of Castro's life as queer Mexican American artist, ever in contest with being described simply. With her ethereal production and fearless honesty, Kristen Castro invites us into a soundscape where transformation is not only possible but necessary, a reminder that the stars we’re born under don’t limit us--they guide us to new beginnings.

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