Jose Luis "El Puma" Rodríguez is a legend among Latin pop crooners, a restrained, dignified figure who treads a narrow path between the sweaty histrionics of
Juan Gabriel and the narcoleptic smoothness of
José José. This album goes by quickly, offering 10 songs in 32 minutes, each one guaranteed to appeal to middle-aged Spanish-speaking women and pretty much no one else. The arrangements on the disc's first half, which offers five ballads in a row, aren't dissimilar to those that might be found on a
Julio Iglesias album from any time in the last 20 years; he's backed by a small group that includes gentle percussion, restrained horns, a lead guitarist who takes brief solos
Walter Becker and
Donald Fagen would call "excessively polished", and synths that could have been programmed by
Narada Michael Walden. On the album's second half, it's all uptempo numbers that would get any cruise ship's lounge jumping, with background vocals, hotter horns, and even some soulful organ-driven funk on the title track. The decision to split the disc up this way could only have been made by an artist whose career stretches way back to the vinyl era, but fans of "El Puma" won't find a truly bad song here -- they just won't find many surprises, either.