Album Review: Love Ghost – Cintas Perdidas: Mexico

The new album from Los Angeles quintet Love Ghost was conceived in a time of great change for the band’s guitarist and vocalist, Finn Bell.

Hispanic and Anglo cultures mix freely within Southern California and the neighbouring Mexican states of Baja California, Sonora, and beyond. That little geography lesson is important for the genesis of the band and album, and its melting pot of influences. Bell met band members Dani and Alex in Mexico, while he knew Daniel and Theo from the LA music scene.

That cultural mix allows the series of collaborations with Latin artists, including Sofia Thompson, Yung Dupe, Jozue, Ardis, Rayben, Dimelow Pro, El Burger, and Dani Torres, to sound natural and fluid when Love Ghost’s often alt gothic finds itself co-existing with hip-hop, trap, and elements of cholo culture. This isn’t appropriation; Cintas Perdidas: Mexico is the product of music, musicians, and social scenes that co-exist and co-mingle, a gathering of different tribes able to find common ground in their shared histories and existence.  

The band and collaborators have an instinctive understanding of the others’ music and skills; you immediately pick up on that with the opening number Fragrance. Bell lets the pop-punk side of his vocals channel lyrics with strong emotional import. You’d expect the appearance of Sofia Thompson to be a contrast: she sings in Spanish, and her vocals occupy a mysterious space between soul and country. It all fits together neatly, though; the arrangement is ready for the new colours and shades her performance brings.

Songs like Float Away, Ignore, and Should’ve Known are more typical of that particular California and Mexican approach to post-punk and alt rock. Emotions are to the fore, the melody restrained, the arrangement lightly and sensitively drawn in sympathy with the soul-exposing presence that is a hallmark of the album’s lyrics.

Even where Insane Asylum allows the trap side of the band’s music to have free rein; the overall impression is that alternative music plays a vital role both in terms of attitude and the song structure. It contrasts with GOD COMPLEX, featuring Dimelow Pro hits a very cholo goth groove, verging on industrial with a gritty cinematic style.

When you see the tracks written about on paper, you wouldn’t be blamed for wondering how it all fits together. Have no fear; it does, and wonderfully so – breaking rules and making its own a template for a new sound.

States Bell, “Cintas Perdidas: México was born during a period when I left the United States and immersed myself in Mexico. [It] reflects the experience of living between two cultures and two emotional landscapes. It explores the full spectrum of the human condition: the highs, the lows, and everything in between, through themes of identity, love, loss, isolation, and resilience.”

Cintas Perdidas Mexico was released on the 11th of September, 2026, and can be streamed on Spotify, Apple Music, and SoundCloud. Love Ghost play a series of live dates in Mexico in the coming weeks, and Bar Sinister in LA in October – for venue and ticket details, hit up the band’s Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok socials.