Hailing from New Delhi and based in Los Angeles, alt-pop visionary Rivita makes her album debut with Snow Angels, a 13-song genre-blurring epic of openness, global talent, and the daring independence of spirit. Fully self-written, produced, and mixed, the album showcases Rivita's fearless approach to storytelling, featuring the clear touch of over 20 musicians from around the world. The work comes out as expansive as it is personal.
"Snow Angels" reads like a journal spanning time zones and life chapters. "Is there anybody out there?" bridges the then and the now, a song she began sketching out as a teenager and finished years later, emerging as a stirring dialogue between her younger self and her present self. It's a powerful example of how music can keep memory while shaping it around growth.
The title track "Snow Angels" is an emotional centerpiece. Inspired by her time studying in London, the track contemplates the days of leaving home in pursuit of dreams, and coming to the realization that the love she was searching for outside of herself had been within her all along. It's a revelation cloaked in the bittersweet melody and melancholic memories of "Snow Angels," a songwriting insight that sticks long.
Flexible Rivita shines throughout the album's soundscape. On the high-energy "Too Close," she's even channelling that strident pop urgency, but cinematic cuts like "Taste Tears" and "Liquid" seem like soundtracks to films still to be written. The tender tracks "Lonely With Someone" and "Someone Else's Arms" delve into the intricate depths of love, loneliness, and longing with a fragile honesty. Around her, global textures deepen, whether it is Ukrainian guitarist Vitaliy Tkachuk's ascending solo on "Yet Another Day" or the funky basslines of Paul Tornbohm on "Speed Limit."
Running a brief 37 minutes, "Snow Angels" leads you in and out of waves of reflection and catharsis, so much so that it ultimately feels like Rivita’s journey is as much yours as it is hRivita'sming in the background as the singer, songwriter, producer, and composer Rivita has worked on this debut, Rivita has made a body of work and a statement of independence, identity, and the search for home in oneself. "Snow Angels" is a testament that growing out of places, while sometimes painful, can lead to beauty.
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