No Dancing, Please!? But how can we resist, when Mento Buru are reeling out track after track designed to set listeners' hips swaying and toes tapping? This carefully crafted album, the Californians' first, elegantly showcases all the bandmembers' best qualities -- their excellent songwriting, stellar arrangements, fantastic musicianship, and phenomenally tight sound. The group seems to have spent considerable time deep in the Jamaican archives, as well as trawling through 2-Tone tomes, and the result of the research is a fusion of styles that has been well tested to please, bound up with some innovative elements of the band's own. As with so many of the third wave bands, the many monikered aggregates that provided the backings for myriad Jamaican singles in the '60s --
the Skatalites,
the Supersonics,
the Soul Vendors, et al. -- are major influences. But not surprisingly, this predominantly Latino band brings its own purer Latino stylings and funkier flavors to its jazzy sound, as well as to its 2-Tone-fired skankers. It's this meld that sets the band apart on the scene and gives it a thoroughly distinctive sound. The fusions are absolutely exhilarating -- high-energy ska, sweet reggae, big-band sounds swinging around a toasting DJ, 2-Tone frenzy, and so much more, all dappled with Latino colors and wrapped around memorable melodies and songs. A phenomenal debut from one of the most accomplished bands on the scene. ~ Jo-Ann Greene