LA CityBeat – Tales of ‘The Town and the City’
Los Lobos’ latest harks back to the depth and emotion of ‘Kiko’
~ By CHRIS MORRIS ~
Is there a band in Los Angeles as in touch with its identity and as in control of its art as Los Lobos? Doubtful. Now in its 33rd year as an ensemble, the East L.A. group has made one of its periodic reconnections with its unique collective genius; the result is the splendid and powerful new album The Town and the City (Hollywood Records), due this Tuesday.
The record comes after a protracted period of time-marking, which saw the release of the covers collection The Ride and a live set cut at the Fillmore. But a series of recent concerts in which the Lobos performed their 1992 masterwork Kiko in its entirety appears to have ignited a creative burst. Certainly the band hasnÂ’t essayed a work as deep and as emotionally direct as The Town and the City since that musically expansive precursor.
Early chatter has connected the two albums, but theyÂ’re very different animals. The self-produced new set does sport the same sonic density and rich mood as its predecessor, and Tchad Blake, KikoÂ’s imaginative engineer and a member of the Lobos side project the Latin Playboys, mixed nine of the albumÂ’s 13 tracks. But, whereas Kiko was a fabulist reverie, The Town and the City is grounded in harsh and sometimes forbidding reality; the layered, clattering sound of the earlier record animates material that can be considered ancestors of the story-songs told on such Lobos opuses as How Will the Wolf Survive?, By the Light of the Moon, and The Neighborhood.
The key songs are set geographically. “The Valley,” which opens the album, could be California’s Central Valley in its paradisiacal state; it may be there where the (presumably migrant) narrator of “Hold On” is, as David Hidalgo sings, “killing myself to survive,” trapped in an endless cycle of poverty-line labor. “The City” namechecks downtown Los Angeles and environs; its lyrics suggest gaiety, but the music hovers like a threatening cloud, and by its end Hidalgo is waving a pistol to “shoot out all the neon lights.” The album concludes with “The Town” – maybe it’s one of those cities to the east; there, Hidalgo hears shots ringing in the night, and the children are told not to stray too far from the yard. It’s home, but an uneasy one.
The most potent tracks are clammy with fear, heavy with regret. On “The Road to Gila Bend,” the nameless narrator flees through the Southwest, broke, ducking the law, escaping some shattered love he left behind; the song is animated by a Neil Young-like guitar line that buzzes like an enormous, enraged bee. “Little Things” sports one of Hidalgo’s most plaintive, heartbreaking vocals and an organ-based melody that threatens to break into “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” Many of Los Lobos’ songs weigh the American dream; the singer here is one who has embraced the dream, to the loss of all else, left to stand in the glittering wreckage of a loveless life.
With Hidalgo and his career-long cowriter Louie Perez summoning all manner of pitch darkness here, it is left to the irrepressible Cesar Rosas to admit shafts of light into the proceedings. He takes the lead on two tracks in Spanish, the self-explanatory “Chuco’s Cumbia” and “No Puedo Mas,” where he flexes his reggae chops like a Latin Marley. Hidalgo accounts for the sunnier “Luna” (the only number that truly harks back to the magical sound of Kiko), the brawny blues buster “Two Dogs and a Bone,” and the lightly swinging “Free Up,” but even in the latter some thoughts of impending death blacken the horizon.
Reflective, somber, and fabulously textured, The Town and the City is an album of serious and mature intent. ItÂ’s another essential entry from Los Lobos, and yet another reminder that this ever-estimable L.A. resource should never be taken for granted.
Chris Morris hosts Watusi Rodeo on Indie 103.1 FM, every Sun. at 11 a.m.