Review Summary: California crushers say "If music be the the food of love, we're having Mexican".
It is a question that must be answered by all bands who start their careers screaming their faces off: what to do when the shouting gets old? Artists who cease to evolve do not cease to exist, they merely cease to matter. Presumably in an attempt to sell even fewer albums than they normally do, here The Bronx have evolved into Mariachi El Bronx, and their music has morphed from punk rock to the Latino flavours of the Mariachi form. Beat that for a world turned upside down.
To the question of whether Mariachi El Bronx is an authentic interpretation of the style that gives the album it's name, the answer is, I have no idea. But as to whether this 11-song, 39-minute set convinces on it's own terms, emphatically it does. This is a release that casts Mariachi El Bronx in a fantastic light. The playing is magnificent, especially the drumming of Jorma Vik and the vocals of Matt Caughtran, here expanding his singing style to the point where his voice might truthfully be called an instrument. Those who believe that bands play punk because that's all they're capable of doing, would do well to listen to this. The stand out track on the album is the resplendent Sleepwalking, a song that bounces along and perfectly encapsulates Matt's vocals and marries it so well with the music,
As significant as the musical achievement, though, is Mariachi El Bronx's sense of place. Not since the days of magnificent X has a band better articulated what it means to live and die in Los Angeles, a beautiful city that operates along lines that would make proud the architects of South African apartheid. In LA Whites, Blacks, Hispanics and Asians live separate lives, a pot that isn't so much melting as it is simmering. It would be wrong to describe that Latino experience as one of cleaning hotel rooms and tending gardens, but not entirely so. When NOFX performed at the House Of Blues on the Sunset Strip, Fat Mike joked that guitarist El Hefe was the first Mexican allowed inside who didn't work in the kitchen. On every song Matt Caughtran has ever recorded he has sung like a man dispossessed, because that's exactly what he is. Here he is doing the same, only this time it is to Mexican rhythms, and to music that can be danced to without breaking someone's nose.
In their everyday lives the members of The Bronx have had the good sense to mix cultures other than their own. Because of this their artistic selves have found the vocabulary to record music that is foreign to a majority of western cities without making it sound alien. In fact, the results are quite magnificent. This was one of the albums that made me appreciate quality over genre, why listen to an average album in a genre of music you prefer, when you could be listening to a masterpiece by a band you have never heard of in a genre you know little about. Maybe people are so afraid of change that they don't want to accept other genres of music or other cultures and maybe that's why cities like LA feel so divided because we try to distance ourselves from change and form our own groups, and maybe it's bands like Mariachi El Bronx that can bridge these gaps in our society.
Recommended Tracks: Cell Mates, Litigation, Sleepwalking
