Certain things just are not meant to be understandable by mere mortals. Time travel, legal contracts, and the mind of a woman are all right up there. So too is figuring out what to expect from the next Los Lobos album to come down the pike.

You'd think that after a couple decades of hanging in there with the band, that you'd kind of get a little vibe about where their sound might be headed, but like as not, you'd be wrong.

Of course, you can always count on rock-solid musicianship from a group that breathes and lives every beat of their music. You can count on a profligate medley of fusions, so rich in their aural variety that it defies description. You can count on some kind of hybrid between the blues-fueled rock of the groups' origens and the chile-fueled soul of their latin forefathers.

Beyond that, things get wiggly.

They've had slickly produced albums and songs that landed them on the airwaves, on the charts, and in the money (How Will the Wolf Survive?, or La Bamba). But they've also turned that all upside down with albums that are so esoteric in their firm artistry that they box the ears of the less adventurous listener (like Wolf Tracks or La Pistola y el Corazon). They have albums that are huge houserockers (Good Morning Aztlan), and they've had albums that are big huge love fest jam sessions with their musical buds (The Ride).

To really love Los Lobos, you can't demand anything beyond simply stellar musicianship. Predictably enough, that's exactly what the group's given us on their newest release, The Town and the City.

The Town and the City is, once again, different from previous Los Lobos albums. There's similarities, of course, but there's an attitude permeating this disc that's unlike previous discs. It's an attitude of contentment and inner peace. It's the kind of competence and self-assuredness that comes from maturity and experience. It's a realization that all those trite thoughts about not being measured by what you have, but rather by who you are, actually are true.

There's a focus here on time and place, and on the commonplace: the themes don't jump around. The album has a unity and a cohesiveness that are too often missing from "product" music. The Town and the City is not product --- it's an artistic expression, and it's an album that's in some ways old-school in its ethics, construction, and sound.

Production quality is something that you actually notice on this album. Not because the album is spit-shined like a mirror with mathematically provable perfection in every digital note. No. That's the recipe for mass-market pop, and it gets to you a very soulless sound in very short order.

The production quality is old-school. It's got all the precision that today's technology brings to the table, but the album has an earthy quality that you haven't heard on an album in decades. It has a depth of layers, with a strategic snap or hiss there, or a too-rough guitar slide over yonder. It's an album that begs to be listened to at least once in a dead-quiet house with the best-insulated headphones money can buy. And then it begs to be listened to all over again, but in a smoky cantina with tequila shots lining the bar and this album queued up on the corner jukebox.

And here I've been bending your ears about all these general observations and I just know y'all are itchin' for me to shut my yap and get on with the listenin'. So, let's go ahead and put this one on the good audio system and let 'er rip....


A Taste of The Town and the City...
I love the bold raw energy of a great rockabilly lick. There! I said it. I mean it too. Rockabilly is all that was ever great about 50s rock, but brought out of the propeller plane era and into a jet age. Rockabilly rocks, and Los Lobos have always been able to flip my switches because of the way they do simply stellar rockabilly fusions.

There's some rockabilly elements on this disc, but nowhere near the kind of leveraging that you find on earlier Los Lobos discs. You get some great steel guitar and snare drum action going in Road to Gila Bend, and there's a reverb effect going there that just gives the whole song a rough and ready attitude. But if you really like the rockabilly spirit, check out the way it blends and moves and works its way throughout the sizzling cumbia rhythms and Steve Berlin's wailing sax on Chuco's Cumbia. This is one of the standout tracks on this disc: a song that has flair and distinction along with a gritty edge of reality to it.

Chuco's Cumbia is also one of a handful of tracks on this disc with Spanish lyrics. Occasionally you find a Los Lobos album that doesn't really do any Spanish lyrics, and occasionally you find quite a healthy dollop. The Town and the City is kind of a middle-ground. It's also kind of a middle-ground in mood, somewhere between their releases of La Pistola y el Corazon and The Neighborhood.

I always liked The Neighborhood because it was an album that got right to the heart of what it is to live as an ordinary American. It was an entire album that built on the kinds of thoughts and feelings that Bruce Springsteen expressed in My Hometown --- a working class reality that nonethless inspires faith, hope, and pride.

That's the same kind of recurring theme that you find in The Town and the City, but it cuts much deeper here. The Town and the City cuts below our workaday lives and hum-drum routine and gets to the very root of our identity. In The Neighborhood, it was the fact that we're living in a society...a neighborhood. In The Town and the City, the album seems to reflect a longer-term relationship, in which we came, we lived in our neighborhood, the city kept growing around us, our family grew too, and the city is part of who we are, and we are part of the reason the city is what it is. It's a symbiotic relationship. It's also a reflection on how cities like Los Angeles got to be the great cities that they are, and it was largely on the backs of hard-working immigrants who built their lives and their families as they built the city they live in. Yet, as the city grows and sprawls, there's still the familiar "neighborhood"....the "town" in which East L.A. is simultaneously a mere part of a larger metropolis while playing a much larger, more significant part for the people whose lives embrace it.

Of course I could just be imagining all that stuff. Too many brewskis in the evening and too many espressos in the morning. I dunno. It's all there to me...and I think if you listen to the sentiments, particularly in Valley, City, and Town, you kind of tie the loose ends together thematically and come away with this kind of impression.

There's three other tracks I want to mention as standouts.

Love the soft sensuality of Luna...LOVE it! The song is done in Spanish, and it's got a very Mexican traditionalism backing it up, with the sh, sh, sh, sh... of gently shaken maracas and the resonant warmth of the classic guitarron. The song is basically a festive celebration of dancing in the moonlight on a warm summer evening...

Two songs are particularly surgical in capturing precise slices of human experience. Two Dogs and a Bone is a song that reminds me of what it was like to grow up with a brother by my side. There's sibling rivalry, sure (or sibling riflery, in our case), but there's also a mutual bond and an interdependence. You forget how that played out sometime shortly after moving away to go to college or join the military, and you grow apart, but listening to this song really jolted me back and it made me pick up the phone to check in with my long-lost rival just to say, "Hey." Of course I can get away with that, since I'm sure Mom always loved me more than him...

And then there's Little Things. This is a song that I'm surprised to find myself liking so much. It's basically a 3 minute encapsulation of what it took Dorothy (of Wizard of Oz fame) a whole bunch of running time to figure out. "If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with."

Little Things is simply a musical recognition of that same fundamental truth. Don't take people for granted. Enjoy the time you're given on this earth. Be happy with what you have (after all, there's probably some poor starving Indian kid over in Africa who would love that plate of green beans and leftover meatloaf).


Bottom Line...
Town and City is an album of artistry, elegance, and craftsmanship. It's less abrasive than Los Lobos albums that lean more heavily towards their rockabilly influences, and it invites a more casual listener. I think this is an outstanding album that can win many friends for Los Lobos. Give it a listen.


Listen for Yourself!!
You don't have to believe me --- truthful kinda guy though I may be --- you can give a listen to this album right now, in the privacy of your own home, totally for free!

I don't believe I've ever seen an established artist put an entire brand-new album on their website for you to "try before you buy", but Los Lobos are doing just that with The Town and the City. Give it a listen...it costs nothing but a click of the mouse and an opening of the ears and mind...
http://www.loslobos.org/


Tale of the Tracks...
A lucky 13 tracks of pure, unbridled wolf music. Here's what's on...

1. Valley
2. Hold On
3. Road to Gila Bend
4. Chuco's Cumbia
5. If You Were Only Here Tonight
6. Luna
7. Two Dogs and a Bone
8. Little Things
9. City
10. Don't Ask Why
11. No Puedo Mas
12. Free Up
13. Town


Closely Related Reviews...
Want to read some more Los Lobos reviews? Like who wouldn't...

* Kiko
* La Pistola y el Corazon
* Good Morning Aztlan
* Mas y Mas: Cancionera (Box Set)
* By the Light of the Moon
* How Will the Wolf Survive?






Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Listening