Sunday, 3 March 2013
If you want to be pedantic it’s actually their fifth recording but (and it’s roughly contemporaneous with the La Bamba soundtrack) but it’s difficult to avoid the suspicion that we’re bordering on the old difficult third album syndrome hereabouts, but there’s a bit more to it than that. After the quantum leap from ...And a Time to Dance to How Will the Wolf Survive there’s an inevitable question of where next, and the answer mightn’t sit too comfortably with those who’d like a repeat of last time, thank you very much.
Things certainly kick off in familiar territory with One Time One Night, but a listen to the lyrics reveal a darker undercurrent running beneath an age-old song about the home of the brave/In this land here of the free and the difference between rhetoric and reality. That’s my reading, anyway, as Hidalgo and Perez take a look at the landscape, don’t particularly like what they see but mask the disappointment behind a lively slice of roots rock.
T-Bone Burnett and Cesar Rosas share the writing credit on the gritty Shakin' Shakin' Shakes, which bops along quite merrily, and makes a pleasant contrast to what’s happening on either side of it. Hidalgo and Pérez are back in the spotlight for Is This All There Is? directing their scrutiny towards a supposed promised land that fails to deliver and leaves tired souls with empty hands asking whether there’s anything around that doesn’t constitute disappointment. Cesar Rosas steps up to the microphone for the traditional Prenda Del Alma, a heartfelt romantic ballad with Hidalgo’s accordion swirling away in the background.
While on the surface All I Wanted To Do Was Dance comes across as smoky R&B there’s a touch of social commentary under the surface, and Rosas, whose assigned writing role seems to involve supplying the hopping and bopping antidote to the darker Hidalgo/Pérez material, is back with Set Me Free (Rosa Lee) which rocks along just fine.