ErickOscar approaches modern alienation with an unexpected weapon on his expansive album, “I Choose Love”: sheer, unabashed neighborliness. The Panamanian-born, U.S.-based songwriter carries over thirty-five years of acoustic guitar fretwork under his fingers, yet his creative engine hums at a curious contemporary crossroads. Oscar writes his own bilingual lyrics and establishes his acoustic strumming foundations before collaborating with AI-assisted music production tools to arrange and orchestrate the surrounding soundscape. The outcome avoids synthetic chill. Instead, it feels like an impromptu block party thrown by someone who genuinely cares about whoever happens to wander down the pavement.
The collection sets its philosophical footing with the title track, “I Choose Love,” marrying country-pop and bluegrass into a driving, foot-stomping affirmation of empathy over material prestige. From there, Oscar treats genre boundaries like mere suggestions on a chalkboard. “Phones Down, Hearts Up” pivots toward an infectious Latin pop and reggaeton bounce, pleading with listeners to pull their gazes away from blue-lit screens to notice the living, breathing humans sitting across the table.
Meanwhile, “Lost and Found in Translation” leans into a sunny Afrobeats groove to remind us that kindness usually bypasses spoken syntax altogether. When he gathers the crowd together on “Pull Up A Chair” and the rapid-fire merengue-EDM charge of “Porch Light On,” the atmosphere feels unmistakably hospitable as though there is always an extra seat at the table and an unlocked door waiting.
The album does not settle for surface-level cheer, however. There is practical, day-to-day solidarity at work. On “Same Sweat, Same Sun,” Oscar folds soca and dancehall riddims into an anthem honoring working-class labor across cultures, while “Make The Move” confronts the heavy dread of cubicle burnout with a determined pop march. He also leaves plenty of space for candid self-reckoning. “Nobody Knows My Name Here” captures the quiet isolation of relocating to an unfamiliar city, “Call First” stages a cathartic indie-folk confrontation with stubborn ego, and the closing ballad “Need to Work on Myself First” gently acknowledges that sustaining love often requires sorting through our personal baggage before trying to unpack someone else’s.
What lingers after the final crescendo is Oscar’s stubborn insistence that goodwill is an active choice rather than a passive sentiment. In an era engineered for cynical distance, when was the last time an album simply invited you to step onto the front porch and say hello?
