Mykki Blanco's 'CAFE PARADISO' Is a Devotional Dance Record With the Lights Down Low
Three years is a long time between records, and Mykki Blanco has used the gap to build something warmer than the club — a room rather than a floor. CAFE PARADISO, out on Transgressive, is a dance album about devotion, and Paste’s Matt Mitchell caught the register exactly when he called it “a full-on queer flâneur tease.”
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: The bass is treated as heat rather than impact. Where a lot of dance-adjacent records in 2026 are still chasing transient punch, this one lets the low end bloom and hang, which is why the album reads as intimate at volumes where it should read as loud. The Spatial Dynamics: The arrangements keep widening. Mitchell noted that the record is “covered” in detail and that its most seductive moment “turns symphonic” — strings and horns arriving not as a flex but as another body in the room. It’s funk architecture with orchestral plumbing, and nothing about it feels bolted on.
Standout Performance
“Little Feet,” and specifically the three-way vocal between Blanco, Ian Isiah and Breakaway. The trade is the trick: all three slip “out of falsettos and into baritones,” as Mitchell put it, “vibrating between flirty and locked-in.” Two minutes, three registers, one unbroken mood.
Why It’s Certified
Because Blanco has never been a tourist in this mode, and the years away sharpened rather than softened the point of view. Mitchell’s framing — that three years on from the “Holidays in the Sun” run, “Blanco still believes in love and in going hard” — is the whole review. CAFE PARADISO is a hookup record with a heart condition, and it means both halves. Put it on late and let the room expand. Certified great.