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NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Before Rosal\u00eda<\/a> became an international pop powerhouse, she was Rosal\u00eda Vila Tobella, a student of flamenco at the hypercompetitive Catalonia College of Music. There, she learned Spain’s folkloric traditions. And then she broke away from them, bringing heritage performance into modern style.<\/p>\n On her fourth studio album, her sonic rebellions have come full circle. \u201cLux\u201d is an offbeat, full-hearted embrace of her classical training through huge orchestral movements. It is also a demanding collection meant for keen listeners. That is accomplished with the use of 13 different languages, a phonetic miracle all performed by Rosal\u00eda. If there is a single avant-garde saving grace in the pop music landscape, it’s here. It’s maximalist, it’s \u201cLux.\u201d<\/p>\n The first taste of \u201cLux\u201d was \u201cBerghain,\u201d named after the famed Berlin club, featuring Bj\u00f6rk<\/a>, a Catalan choir, the experimentalist Yves Tumor<\/a> and the London Symphonic Orchestra. Allow that to be its own kind of provocation: Berghain is known for debauchery; Rosal\u00eda positions her \u201cBerghain\u201d as a kind of divinity, singing in a distinctly operatic style \u2014 one of the album’s central themes explored with a kind of Nick Cave-esque<\/a> ethos.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is divine intervention,\u201d Bj\u00f6rk joins the orchestra. \u201cThe only way to save us is through divine intervention.\u201d Yves Tumor jumps in with their own solace, quoting Mike Tyson\u2019s<\/a> profane 2002 attack on Lennox Lewis<\/a>. Surprises, Rosal\u00eda has a few.<\/p>\n It’s been three years since the celebrated \u201cMotomami\u201d<\/a> further cemented her unique position as a genre-agnostic talent, one who could combine flamenco with reggaeton, bachata, future-tech and Bj\u00f6rk-indebted ballads. It was clear then that Rosal\u00eda offered something in fiercely short supply in the modern pop landscape \u2014 something truly new, asymmetrical \u2014 as well as offering something quite familiar: concerns around cultural appropriation. Rosal\u00eda, a white Catalan woman, was experimenting with Afro-Caribbean genres like dembow, and receiving worldwide acclaim for it. But those looking for \u201cMotomami\u201d will be hard-pressed to find it on the 18-track, hourlong \u201cLux.” The album is less concerned with Latin trap club bangers and instead delves into a profound contemporary classicism in sound and stylistic Catholicism in content.<\/p>\n Hits, here, are hidden and unusual \u2014 \u201cPorcelana,\u201d performed partially in Japanese, \u201cDe Madrug\u00e1,\u201d with its Ukrainian and unexpected key change, the movements of \u201cDios Es Un Stalker\u201d and the swaying \u201cLa Perla,\u201d which will no doubt inspire fan theories about Puerto Rican singer Rauw Alejandro<\/a>.<\/p>\n Joys, however, are not hard to parse. Like the ancestral rhythms of \u201cLa Rumba Del Perd\u00f3n,\u201d written with El Guincho (a frequent collaborator who doesn’t make many appearances on the album), or the ascendant and operatic \u201cMio Cristo,\u201d performed entirely in Italian. Stay tuned for the break at the end, where the curtain is pulled back for a brief second on Rosal\u00eda’s process. \u201cThat’s gonna be the energy,\u201d she smiles after a refined falsetto. \u201cAnd then\u2014\u201d she’s cut off by its cinematic coda.<\/p>\n