By 2022, local singer-songwriter Alisa Amador had burned out on the business. The constant touring to often tiny audiences and the chronic teetering on the edge being flat broke had Amador ready to give up.
“I was grieving what I thought was the end of my music career,” she said from her home in Cambridge.
On the day Amador began figuring out how she should break the news to fans and friends, her family and manager, she got a call from NPR telling her she’d won the prestigious Tiny Desk Contest.
“I almost told them to call someone else because I thought music was ending for me,” she said. “In that split second before I accepted the award, I said to myself that I had to restart.”
If the 2022 win was the restart, her recently released debut full-length album is the relaunch.
“Multitudes” features songs sung in English and Spanish. It ranges from tightly, smartly, brightly produced indie pop (“Love Hate Song”) to dreamy, string-driven ballads (“Nudo de raices”). It has stuff that might remind fans of her towering soul song “Timing” and lots more stuff that’s completely new.
“I get the question, ‘What genre is your music?, and I’ve learned to be comfortable saying, ‘I have no idea,’” she said.
Amador thinks the question and answer double as a metaphor for being a person.
Born to parents in the Latin folk scene, she spent a big chunk of her childhood on tour with her family band Sol Y Canto. She has spent long periods visiting her grandparents in Puerto Rico and New Mexico, went to college in Maine, and studied in Buenos Aires. Her childhood, her heritage, her career path, none of them fit neatly in any single box. Naturally, her music follows suit.
The one thread that binds “Multitudes” is its bracing emotional honesty. Very simply, these are songs perfect for weeping, or pumping your fist, or falling apart — “I Need to Believe” is good for all three with its shout of “I need to believe that there’s nothing wrong with the songs I’m singing…I need to believe that I do belong in this world I live in.”
“I can’t say that (the past two years) have been simple or easy or all positive, there have been a lot of highs and lows, but this record feels so true to me, and it also just feels like a really good record,” she said with a little laugh. “My dream is for people to turn to it again and again for whatever they need, if they need to dance and scream, or if they need to cry, or if they need a quiet space to feel safe.”
Amador’s honesty extends to her admission that the past two years have been exhausting (as were the two before that). She has struggled to eke out a living through music despite the momentum. Thankfully, the momentum only seems to be building.
The album release runs into the busiest six-month run of her career. She makes her national TV debut on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” on June 27 and plays a hometown show Dec. 5 at the Sinclair. Between the bookends will be gigs with Lake Street Dive, festival appearances, dozens of solo dates, and hopefully another big breakthrough.
For details and tickets, visit alisaamador.com
