Chicago’s Divino Niño dazzles with new album
Rock band’s latest boasts left-of-center styles like neoperreo
It was unsurprising when beloved local rock band Divino Niño found a supportive national and international audience after the release of their debut album, “Foam.” In the five years since we last spoke to them, the band — whose members include Camilo Medina, Javier Forero, Guillermo Rodriguez, Pierce Codina and Justin Vittori — have gone on to release their debut LP; tour the world; and garner positive press and reviews from NPR, Rolling Stone and Pitchfork.
But the band, bored by the sound that has made them so popular, decided to pivot for their latest record, “Last Spa on Earth.” Recording during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the album enthusiastically embraces elements of neoperreo, drum and bass, and other left-ofcenter genres for a body of work that is transgressive, propulsive and unique. “Last Spa on Earth” is out now. The band next plays in Chicago on Oct. 9 at Lincoln Hall.
Work on the album began in 2019. However, the band said their earliest songwriting efforts were less fruitful than they anticipated. Most of the songs written during that time sounded too similar to their previous record, “Foam,” and did not end up on the new album. Many of the tracks were influenced by the experience of watching their peers perform live. Without the rush of live music, they turned to other sources of inspiration.
“I don’t think we had grown enough musically,” said Codina.
“We had to go through a lot of songs that felt more connected to how ‘Foam’ was sounding. We just did a lot of that until we were just kind of bored,” Medina added. “We have to go kind of crazy to be entertained and excited about it.”
Relieving their musical boredom came about through creative restrictions during the pandemic. One workaround was to create a creative bubble or “pod” for writing. The band members would isolate, take COVID-19 tests and then meet for two weeks in a remote place. One location was a 20-acre property in rural Wisconsin. Another was a cabin in the
Smoky Mountains. What was most critical for the group was the isolation from others. “We wanted to make a lot of noise,” said Codina.
Without the worry of nosy neighbors (minus one or two who were curious about their “screaming”), the group was free to experiment. And experiment, they did. Few genres were off-limits.
Their process soon became a far cry from how they originally wrote songs. In the past, one of the band members — maybe Medina or Forero or Rodriguez — would bring a song to the group in a more traditional band-songwriter dynamic. But without the capability to meet regularly, their few in-person meetups became “an explosion” of “intense, feverish” creation. Not knowing when they’d see each other again, they were less hesitant to showcase ideas about incorporating genres, particularly electronic-based genres, into their music.
Neoperreo, a subgenre of reggaeton, became one source of inspiration. The genre, largely led by women, features empowering lyrics and experimental production. “It didn’t sound like mainstream reggaeton. It felt like (this) really obscure vibe,” Medina said. “So I think our way into reggaeton wasn’t necessarily from the mainstream; it was from the weirdos. That’s honestly what I’m personally the most attracted to.
Like the weirdos, the ones who don’t fit, doing the weird (stuff ). I like that.”
Another genre they were drawn to was drum and bass, a techno subgenre featuring fast-paced breakbeats and heavy bass lines. Although the group wouldn’t classify the new record as “drum and bass,” they did say the genre was influential in exposing them to faster tempos, something they never considered too much when making music in the past.
“I wasn’t confident that we’d even have an album necessarily,” Codina said. “We didn’t know if live music was going to come back during that time (and) we had no idea what (was) going to happen to the world. So it kind of felt a little more like high school, just like the love of doing it.”
The result is a record that is boundary-pushing, unclassifiable yet captivating from start to finish. Stripped of any pressure, the group was free to envelop themselves in fun, exciting, but not serious creativity.
“What ended up being evolution was actually not intellectual,” Medina said. “It was very intuitive decision making.”
Divino Niño will have a record-release party (with Little Jesus) at 8 p.m. Oct. 9 at Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln Ave.; tickets: $25 (ages 18+) at lh-st.com