Argentine singer/songwriter Malena Zavala has shared a new single, “Memories Gone,” from her forthcoming album La Yarará, out on April 17 via Yucatan Records. “Memories Gone” follows previous singles “En La Noche,” “I’m Leaving Home” and the title track. La Yarará will serve as the follow-up to her 2018 debut album Aliso.
“Memories Gone” is a yearning chamber pop number with Zavala’s gently caressing vocals guiding listeners through the confines of her mind. The brisk warbles of her 10-stringed ronroco add a poignant beauty and make this track feel as if you’re floating in a palatial dreamscape out of harm’s way. It’s a painful surrender to the limitations of one’s recollection, and Zavala unpacks each complex emotion with elegance, eventually building towards a curtain close of layered vocal opulence.
The song is about “mourning the loss of a memory that has faded away,” says Zavala, “I wrote it when making my first album, but I wanted to tie it all in with the Latino feel of ‘La Yarará’ so I stripped it back to vocals and guitar added a ronroco arrangement. The ronroco is an Andean ten-stringed guitar-like instrument that has a slight echo and somehow creates its own reverb, and I love the way it sounds on the track.”
“The yarará is a venomous snake, a viper, in Argentina,” Zavala says of the album title. “It’s also used as a diss to a sassy woman. My parents always called me that, so I’m calling the album that as a semi-in-joke.”
Listen to “Memories Gone” below, and you can preorder La Yarará here.