We

Vigüela, a traditional Central Spanish folk quintet, take inspiration from US ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, using the Castillian songbook as a platform for revival and encounter. We, the Toledo band's tenth album, which follows 2022's A la Manera Artesana, advances a decade-long mission (though the band goes back to the post-Franco period) to strip back sound and tap passions running deeper than mere sentiment or gesture. This time round the group explore Spain's son tradition, which has ancient roots in rural labour, festivals, love and the picaresque. Some of the album's songs wind down rhythm – the driving force of most Western music – to foreground speech prosody and the natural cadences and tonal range of the human voice. Listen, or watch, the quartet perform the closing track, ‘We (Corraleras de Lebrija)’ (a live performance is on YouTube), and you get a powerful sense of an almost cultic, inward-looking circle of intense communication, not so much call-and-response as insist-and-demand. ‘Caminan para Alemania’, ‘El Dote de Inesilla y el Brillante’ and ‘La Pava’ are performed in a similar vein, employing strident storytelling and choral refrains – perhaps with a mortar or bottle passing for percussion – to recreate a forgotten world. On other tracks, melodies are sweetened with violin and a strummed proto-flamenco guitar and either omit lyrics altogether (as on ‘La Tía Pitita (Peretas)’) or invoke a more upbeat, raucous vocal (as on ‘Seguidillas van por Tu Calle’). ‘Spain is different’ has become a cliché; on Vigüela's We, this becomes a statement of fact.