Five years after
Sino, Mexico’s favorite indie rock heroes
Café Tacuba reinvent their own crazy wheel with
El Objeto Antes Llamado Disco (loosely translated: "the object formerly known as a disc"; or in this case, "album"). Since the band has always recorded infrequently, each new album is an event. This set is a full-on attempt to evolve musically and reinvent the way they perceive themselves as a band. To that end,
Café Tacuba's producer
Gustavo Santaolalla, producer Anibal Kerpel, and recording engineer Joe Chiccarelli recorded in front of studio audiences in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, and Santiago before taking the tracks into post-production. Stripped back to the core quartet -- we've not heard them this way since their earliest records --
Café Tacuba sought to erase boundaries between themselves and listeners, and simultaneously to take audience perceptions directly into the sound of the record, thereby confronting and expanding their previously held beliefs about their status as an entity. Opener "Pajaros" starts with a singsong synth and Rubén Albarrán's falsetto, answered by guitars, more keyboards, and sprightly backing vocals. The album’s first single, "De Este Lado del Camino" (On This Side of the Road), commences as a sparse synth ballad, only to be gradually built up by multi-tracked electric piano, guitars, and organic and synthetic percussion; it becomes a dramatic anthem. The very next cut, "Espuma," contains a breezy, gentle pop melody underscored with repetitive guitar lines from a folk melody and a lithe and infectious hook. "Yo Busco" is a bouncing rock tune with pulsing guitars countered by layers of synths, loops, and propulsive basslines as Albarrán's vocals cut right through the density. Set-closer "Volcan" is almost elegiac, woven through with a narrative that comes more from folk music that it does pop, but its lush production and tapered textures carry the raw, sinuous emotion in Albarrán's vocal, and extend the corrido-like narrative to the very threshold of 21st century indie pop. Musically, this set walks a beautiful line between the rock & roll dynamics of
Sino and the more atmospheric, electronic sounds of
Cuatros Caminos and the production experimentations of Reves, yet goes further than them all to become the most accessible recording in their catalog. With
El Objeto Antes Llamado Disco,
Café Tacuba have moved beyond the categorical confines of rock en español, despite being its very torchbearers. Instead, these ten songs prove that they are, quite literally, one of the finest and most adventurous rock bands in the world. ~ Thom Jurek