There’s a rare kind of honesty that threads through Guitarricadelafuente’s voice, it’s an ache that feels both rooted in the soil of the past and suspended in a haze of future nostalgia. With his latest album, Spanish Leather, the Spanish singer-songwriter steps into a new chapter. One that is braver, bolder, and unafraid to bare it all. The title itself holds a double meaning. “Even before the songs came, I had the name,” he told us. “In Spanish, you say ‘estás en cueros’ when you’re naked, or bare. But cueros also means leather. So there’s this play on being exposed, being seen, and also this material, leather, that is handcrafted, enduring and marked by time.”
Today, Guitarricadelafuente unveils a new chapter in his Spanish Leather universe with the release of “Midsummer Pipe Dream”, a luminous rework of his original track now featuring Australian pop star Troye Sivan. Their voices, first intertwined on Troye’s In My Room, reunite here in a shared state of suspended emotion. “Being the only feature on each other’s albums feels deeply meaningful to me,” Guitarrica reflects. “Pipe Dream picks up where In My Room left off, drifting further into that intimate space.” Co-written with a powerhouse team including Carter Lang and Raül Refree, the track explores the blurred line between fantasy and reality, asking tenderly: “¿Quieres despertar de este pipe dream?”: Do you want to wake up from this dream? With Troye’s voice now woven into the fabric, the duet deepens the ache, capturing the soft chaos of modern longing and the sweetness of surrendering to illusion, if only for a midsummer moment.
That same tension, between vulnerability and craftsmanship, between tradition and rebellion, sits at the heart of this album. Known for his earlier work inspired by folklore and the raw sounds of his native Benicàssim in the province of Castellón, Spain, Guitarrica, born Álvaro Lafuente, found himself at a turning point after La Cantera. “I was realizing that folklore, for me, was always something rooted in the past. But I started to ask: what would it feel like to carry that heritage into the future? What does it mean to tell stories that are of the now, but still carry echoes of where we come from?”
This reckoning sparked a new sonic landscape that still hints at the familiar strums of Jota and flamenco, but folds in dreamy textures, seductive synths, and an unapologetically pop-forward sensibility. But make no mistake: this isn’t a pivot. It’s a return. Just a more expansive one. “I think, like many teenagers, I tried to escape where I came from. I left my village, left the music my family listened to. But eventually, I realized you can’t reject what’s in your skin. It’s there, even in the way you see the world.”
That’s why Spanish Leather feels so intimate, like pages from a journal that’s both deeply personal and surprisingly universal. On standout tracks like Full-Time Papi, he leans into his sensual side with a cheeky self-awareness that feels like liberation. “I’ve always sung about sensuality in a subtle, almost innocent way. But now, I wanted to let that go. To be more explicit. To show what it means to explore your body, your desires, and to grow up and own them.” The accompanying video is as steamy as it is conceptual, playing with the gaze, the mask, and the many faces we wear when we desire and are desired.
And yet, for all the flirtation and fire, the heart of the album is still laced with emotion and a sense of seeking. “I think I was chasing joy in this album,” he says. “Joy, instinct, and the stories that surround us today.” He doesn’t shy away from pop. In fact, he embraces it as the modern iteration of folklore. “I used to have this prejudice around pop music, thinking it made you less special. But pop is just another way of telling stories that everyone lives: love, heartbreak, everyday life. Isn’t that what traditional songs used to do? Maybe in 100 years, a Dua Lipa song will feel like the folklore of today.”
That’s the kind of poetic awareness that defines Spanish Leather. It’s not just a collection of songs, but a meditation on time, on identity, on how we wear the places we come from. And how, even in the act of shedding our past, we often find ourselves right back in it, only this time with clarity, with softness and strength.
As Guitarricadelafuente prepares to bring these songs to life on stage, he does so not as a newcomer, but as an artist fully inhabiting his contradictions. A child of folklore. A student of pop. The man in leather; scuffed, softened, and shaped by time. And now, finally, unafraid to be seen in cueros.
For tickets to catch Guitarricadelafuente live, click here and join him in this new era.
Photos by: Wolfgang Tillmans
