A glance at the personnel listing reveals what looks suspiciously like a vote of no confidence in drummer Louis Pérez, with session musos Jerry Marotta and Jim Keltner getting most of the action, but that’s possibly explained by the guitars, jarana, hidalguer in the credits after Louie’s name.
Looking at the big picture (with the benefit of some twenty-odd years’ hindsight) you can trace an evolution in the Los Lobos catalogue from the first two independent releases to the dance/party band (...And a Time to Dance), to eclectic roots rockers hinting at good things to come (How Will the Wolf Survive, great album in itself, but hasn’t quite got there yet) to stretching the wings a bit (By the Light of the Moon). In my reading of things La Bamba is an understandable flirtation with the mainstream since the preceding recordings didn’t race out the door by the semi-trailer load and someone had to provide the music for the Latino rocker biopic, so why not?
Reassert the roots with La Pistola y el Corazón, which I suspect has a bit to do with the impressive array of traditional instruments in the listing below. It’s difficult to go much further than I suspect in that regard, since The Neighbourhood is the only album where the Wikipedia provides those details and the other results at the top of a Google search for Los Lobos discography don’t provide ‘em at all. Pistola presumably had them as well, and with the possibilities in the process of being explored things are being set in place for what was to follow.
What followed was, of course, Kiko, one of the great (for my money, anyway) albums. With The Neighborhood they’re well on the way but not quite there yet. Kiko and the subsequent consolidation of the territory is, however, well and truly on the horizon and The Neighborhood’s bringing-it-all-back-home portrait of the ups and downs of an urban existence delivers a slice of Americana (from well before that label existed as a genre) blending strands of roots music into an intriguing mix that’ll offer plenty of room for subsequent exploration.