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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Unfortunately the Jaime Hernandez cover makes this look like a cheapo compilation but that couldn't be further from the truth - this is a wonderful record, very thoughtful and intelligent but always grounding itself in the blues and traditional Mexican music before it gets too tricky. It's a concept album on the subject of immigration and the hard life of outsiders in a new country but told without any moralizing or sentimentality and the individual tracks stand up on their own. The production by the band themselves (with a bit of help from Tchad Blake and Robert Carranza) keeps the layered soundscapes of 'Kiko' and 'Colossal Head' but somehow seems more unified, despite the variety of sounds here. We go from the exotic samba of "Chuco's Cumbia" to the lowdown blues of "Two Dogs And A Bone" and to the Chicano reggae (?) of "No Puedo Más". David Hidalgo's guitar and soulful vocals are absolutely fantastic throughout and especially on the tracks "Little things" and "Don't ask why", he really is a major talent and is perfectly backed up by the whole band.
Highly recommended rock by a band at the top of their game, as good as anything by stadium-filling conceptual rock Gods like U2 and Pink Floyd.
Highly recommended rock by a band at the top of their game, as good as anything by stadium-filling conceptual rock Gods like U2 and Pink Floyd.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
I am surprised that there is no review of this superb album. Although the band has been going since 1973 they are still capable of superb songs with lyrics that do say something. The vocals are recognisable right away and is up there with any in current "mature " rock. Also if you appreciate expressive guitar you cant get much better than David Hidalgo.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
32 reviews
49 of 50 people found the following review helpful
Absolutely Sublime
20 Sep 2006
Format:Audio CD
A sophisticated record by a mature band. While traces of their bad boy roots rock remain, this record shows a older, more contemplative group of artists. On their landmark debut album they had an anthem of sorts about the plight, courage, and determination of the Latino immigrant with the soaring "Will the Wolf Survive?" Here, there are no anthems, but the story is now filled in with multiple shades and tones. What the boys kicked in the music scene door with back in the Eighties is now voiced with a tired wisdom, regret, and bittersweet pride.
Standout tracks are all over this record; among the best has to be Hidalgo and Perez's "Little Things." Strongly evoking Procol Harem's "A Whiter Shade of Pale," it's that kind of Lobos tune that can just kill you where you stand. An aching, gorgeous and beautifully sad masterpiece.
Caesar Rosas, goes all George Harrison on us this time out and only gives up two songs. Although his "No Puedo Mas" coming towards the end of the record is clearly its furious blues-rock highlight without a doubt. Anyone bemoaning the lack of "rock" on the record should skip straight to this burner and turn it up nice and loud.
But that's not what this record is about. It's about the desperate, spooky "Hold On," the Will the Wolf Survive-like "Road to Gila Bend," the bone-weary, resigned "If Only You were Here Tonight," (a song in which you'd swear Hidalgo's guitar is channeling the ghost of Jerry Garcia), and the foreboding final track "Town."
All-in-all, an excellent group of songs that is strangely reminiscent of Bob Dylan's recent brooding work. A album that requires multiple listens, your attention and your heart.
A keeper.
Standout tracks are all over this record; among the best has to be Hidalgo and Perez's "Little Things." Strongly evoking Procol Harem's "A Whiter Shade of Pale," it's that kind of Lobos tune that can just kill you where you stand. An aching, gorgeous and beautifully sad masterpiece.
Caesar Rosas, goes all George Harrison on us this time out and only gives up two songs. Although his "No Puedo Mas" coming towards the end of the record is clearly its furious blues-rock highlight without a doubt. Anyone bemoaning the lack of "rock" on the record should skip straight to this burner and turn it up nice and loud.
But that's not what this record is about. It's about the desperate, spooky "Hold On," the Will the Wolf Survive-like "Road to Gila Bend," the bone-weary, resigned "If Only You were Here Tonight," (a song in which you'd swear Hidalgo's guitar is channeling the ghost of Jerry Garcia), and the foreboding final track "Town."
All-in-all, an excellent group of songs that is strangely reminiscent of Bob Dylan's recent brooding work. A album that requires multiple listens, your attention and your heart.
A keeper.
32 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Victims of their own talent
28 Sep 2006
Format:Audio CD
If this album had been issued by a band whose name consisted of a number and a noun; and whose members were all in their twenties, decked out in skinny glasses, black leather, little beards, and kinky hair, and whose album art consisted of the band members staring glumly into the eye of a camera,this CD would be HUGE.
So if you've never heard of Los Lobos; or if you think they're just a bunch of pudgy throwbacks to the roots-music movement; or if you liked Kiko but lost interest after that; or even if you love Los Lobos so much you'd buy anything they recorded, why not try a little experiment: buy the CD; take it out of the packaging without looking at any of it; slap it into your audio system; grab a comfortable chair and place it right in the center of the stereo image; turn out the lights; and listen as closely as you possibly can.
Who are these guys? How the hell did they come up with these soundscapes, timbres, moods, and fleeting highlights? How come, just when you're expecting the band to boost the volume over the top, throw the drums in your face, and "like, totally rock out," they drop the volume and add a nuance that is more exhilarating than a rave up would ever be? How, with state of the art recording techniques, do they make their songs sound hazy, intriguingly distant, like old lp's without the scratches? Who knows? Wait, I've GOT to know.
But hey, did you hear that? What the guitars are doing? If he weren't so humble, it would be hard to believe that the lead player could be capable of playing so many styles so perfectly, and yet so personally. I wait in vain for the cliches. He's in the pantheon, allright.
What's with the bass player? What, no funky thumb-wacking, no treble-booster? Is that even a bass guitar, when it insuates itself so fluidly into the interior of the chords? Hell, sometimes the bass note is the only thing making the chords change.
How come I believe what the singer's saying? When he's expressing desperation and weariness, I want to back away. I don't want to hear about it.
SO ANYWAY, how do you like this new record by "Ace44," the "Gleaming Swords," "Heatrash," or whatever name you want to give this band?
It's one of the best records you ever heard in your life, by any band, at any time.
Forget what you think you know about Los Lobos. It's them, but it's more than them this time.
John
So if you've never heard of Los Lobos; or if you think they're just a bunch of pudgy throwbacks to the roots-music movement; or if you liked Kiko but lost interest after that; or even if you love Los Lobos so much you'd buy anything they recorded, why not try a little experiment: buy the CD; take it out of the packaging without looking at any of it; slap it into your audio system; grab a comfortable chair and place it right in the center of the stereo image; turn out the lights; and listen as closely as you possibly can.
Who are these guys? How the hell did they come up with these soundscapes, timbres, moods, and fleeting highlights? How come, just when you're expecting the band to boost the volume over the top, throw the drums in your face, and "like, totally rock out," they drop the volume and add a nuance that is more exhilarating than a rave up would ever be? How, with state of the art recording techniques, do they make their songs sound hazy, intriguingly distant, like old lp's without the scratches? Who knows? Wait, I've GOT to know.
But hey, did you hear that? What the guitars are doing? If he weren't so humble, it would be hard to believe that the lead player could be capable of playing so many styles so perfectly, and yet so personally. I wait in vain for the cliches. He's in the pantheon, allright.
What's with the bass player? What, no funky thumb-wacking, no treble-booster? Is that even a bass guitar, when it insuates itself so fluidly into the interior of the chords? Hell, sometimes the bass note is the only thing making the chords change.
How come I believe what the singer's saying? When he's expressing desperation and weariness, I want to back away. I don't want to hear about it.
SO ANYWAY, how do you like this new record by "Ace44," the "Gleaming Swords," "Heatrash," or whatever name you want to give this band?
It's one of the best records you ever heard in your life, by any band, at any time.
Forget what you think you know about Los Lobos. It's them, but it's more than them this time.
John
27 of 29 people found the following review helpful
East LA Sgt Peppers
23 Sep 2006
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is the deal. I'd only amplify the previous positive reviews, which I admire: great, great recording, and I'd also mention that the atmospherics, as my music pals call them, are more integrated here than on about any CD I've heard in a very long while, maybe ever. There is just stuff here that continually surprises you, and not in some obnoxious, "clever" way. It's all part of the portrait they're painting, the immigrant life In California. Like the dab of yellow on a great painting that makes you see everything, except the dab of yellow. It's the trigger.
The Playing is explosive when necessary, subtle when appropriate. Probably their strongest lyrics yet. (I'm picky, because I have a book out that deals with immigrant LA, the source of my own writer's inspiration. They kick me real bad here, and for that I'm grateful.)
The guitar performances are especially unbelievably fine. Anyone who has heard "Tomorrow Never Knows" on the box set know that these guys can sound as if George Martin had run the guitar track backwards. But they can run it real time.
Man, what an accomplishment from los veteranos del Norte. And, I say this as a listener for many years, there is NO BAND better than Los Lobos. Nobody. Nowhere. The Beatles of East LA. Not a small accomplishment. Amigos siempre. Amigos de mi corazon.
My Spanish sucks. Forgive me, amigos. Your record is the best of this and many years.
The Playing is explosive when necessary, subtle when appropriate. Probably their strongest lyrics yet. (I'm picky, because I have a book out that deals with immigrant LA, the source of my own writer's inspiration. They kick me real bad here, and for that I'm grateful.)
The guitar performances are especially unbelievably fine. Anyone who has heard "Tomorrow Never Knows" on the box set know that these guys can sound as if George Martin had run the guitar track backwards. But they can run it real time.
Man, what an accomplishment from los veteranos del Norte. And, I say this as a listener for many years, there is NO BAND better than Los Lobos. Nobody. Nowhere. The Beatles of East LA. Not a small accomplishment. Amigos siempre. Amigos de mi corazon.
My Spanish sucks. Forgive me, amigos. Your record is the best of this and many years.
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