Silvia Pérez Cruz: Tiny Desk Concert

Anamaria Sayre | July 9, 2024 Spanish singer Silvia Pérez Cruz grew up in the cradle of magnificent extremes. Her hometown Palafrugell on the Costa Brava of the Mediterranean sea is renowned as much for its stunning turquoise waters and dazzling summer sun as it is for biting bitter winds and unforgiving winter nights. Amidst that chaos her songs were born: brilliantly distinct little capsules of human experience. Whether singing about joy, pain, grief or curiosity, that duality between sunshine and gray skies is present in her work. “Yo soy inescrutable (I am inscrutable),” she cries on “Salir distinto.” Her emotive, jazz-tinged voice and ’54 acoustic guitar (she picked it up at a vintage shop some years ago in New York) transcends time and physical space. “Yo prefiero el desastre / Y escucharte sin perjuicio (I prefer disaster / And to listen to you without prejudice),” she coos. And in this moment, she’s impossible to turn away from — a vessel for eons of melancholic Mediterranean sec