The LP, featuring Fred again… and Sting, is a follow-up to the duo’s Grammy-winning Papota — and a response to its success
The wait is over — Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso’s Free Spirits is finally here. The album marks the Argentine duo’s second full-length LP and is the highly anticipated follow-up to their Grammy Award-winning EP Papota.
Ahead of the release of Free Spirits, Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso dropped new single Nintendo-lite “Goo Goo Ga Ga,” which unexpectedly features Jack Black. The comedian-musician’s appearance on the LP is one of many surprising guests on the project; Sting, Fred again…, and Anderson .Paak are also featured.
After the life-altering success of Papota, Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso planned to release their sophomore album Top of the Hills last December. But a day before its release, the duo pushed back the album and tour. “We got swept up in a level of exposure, pressure, and success that we didn’t know how to handle, and we made hasty, wrong decisions,” the band wrote in a statement posted to their Instagram. “It took us time to realize that we are exhausted and need to rest and heal.”
Sting apparently played a pivotal role in their journey and the creation of Free Spirits, which acts as a reset of sorts. In detailed album promotion material for the album, the rock icon took to Instagram to explain how he “helped” Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso grapple with their newfound fame during a wellness retreat at a “secretive” holistic Free Spirits Center. (Kudos to the in-depth album world-building).
While there, the duo underwent a “transcendent 12-step program that reshaped their creative outlook” and helped formulate Free Spirits, an album “which confronts the twelve internal conflicts that pushed them to their breaking point,” according to a press release. If that sounds a bit ridiculous and over-the-top, it’s by design. Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso are Latin pop’s designated mischief makers, who are fully committed to the bit.
Despite last year’s foiled tour plans, the press release also hints that Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso will bring Free Spirits out on a world tour. Let’s hope that one isn’t a stunt.
