Album Review: Jess Ribeiro Has A Love Hate Relationship

For Jess Ribeiro, making a record is a lot like falling in love: it’s a dive into the unknown with the belief that the currents will carry you. With such a mind-frame, Ribeiro’s new album, Love Hate, is a grungey, synth-pop landscape of wonder, sadness, euphoria, delusions, and peace. In essence, it is a journey into the toxic and healing nature that is called “a relationship.”

Ribeiro’s voice is a mood. Singing her songs as if she has been drugged by love, and, at times, her trip is exciting and imaginative while, other times, it tiring and painfully thought-provoking. Yet, at all times, she is emoting that love is an emotional ride.While we may want love to make us dream, it hurts when it makes us think. It is as if our imaginations turns into revelations, and fantasies become truths we did not want to know about ourselves. Thus, sonically, Love Hate feels like a mystical journey into a heart that has fallen in love with another, and, in turn, learned things she hated about herself. 

“Funny” how even a loving relationship reveals our self-loathing! Tracks like, ‘Goodbye Heart,” ‘Dylan,” “Painkiller,” and “Young Love” have Ribeiro crooning to romance as a teacher; where even in her absence you feel her presenting a lesson. From the minute you start a relationship, you also start a questions, “Can two people grow together and for the better?” From “Stranger” to “Crawling Back To You,” Ribeiro tries to figure this out over a soundscape that is both dreamy and edged. She treats melodies like they are gift bags, of which you stuff candy and stress into them. The result is a record embodying the Love and Hate that goes into relationships. To Buy Jess Ribeiro’s Love Hate On April 12 Click Here.