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 Entertainment | November 2007 
Those Mexican Rockers Who Defy Expectations
 Ben Ratliff - NYTimes
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| Rubén Albarrán of Café Tacuba at the Hammerstein Ballroom. (Julieta Cervantes/NY Times)
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For a while, during the mid-1990s, the Mexican rock band Café Tacuba looked as if it was heading toward a careful balance of past-meets-future, mixing up Mexican folk and bolero roots with progressive, futuristic, pan-national ideas about rock or electronic music. But even that balance ended up as a limitation; it seems the band would rather work without any expectations at all.
Café Tacuba’s new record, “Sino” (Universal Latino), sounds more like classic-rock radio, as did the band’s show at the Hammerstein Ballroom on Tuesday night. And the band’s lyrics, paradoxically, are leaning toward a punk’s general suspicion of categories. “You define rock or electronica, reggaetón or hip-hop, on what the radio imposes,” the band’s short, animated singer Rubén Albarrán sneered in the new song “De Acuerdo.” “Let’s agree to disagree.” And on “El Outsider” he took the position of living outside of the system: of laws, doctors, the media.
In a mock-serious ritual, or a serious mock ritual, Mr. Albarrán changes his name every album; for now it’s the Aztec-sounding Ixxi Xoo. He played the first half of the show with a black bowler pulled down over his ears, with eye-slits above the hatband. His singing veers between a beautiful falsetto and an ugly rasp. Punks never had this much fun.
It’s not clear how far to trust a proclamation in a Café Tacuba song. The band turns sarcasm inside out, showing the sentiment involved in every act of parody. More and more it plays thoughtfully with pop of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Much of the band’s excellent new single, “Volver a Comenzar,” sounds like New Order with a bass line imported from Chic; as a turnaround a vocal-harmony section in the middle evokes the Beach Boys. And the lyrics reflect a mistrust of easy answers or true beliefs. They ruminate on how one’s life could be best lived again, casting doubt on whether one could begin to fix all the mistakes.
“Sino” is a pop record, and an excellent one. There are no folk instruments anywhere. As all four members of the band have emerged as writers and singers — and this count leaves out the drummer, Victor Indrizzo, the American session drummer who recently joined the band — they’re following their own pleasure principles, and combining them smoothly.
But this is also a band that can sing a sweet romantic song. Its version of “Cómo te Extraño Mi Amore,” a song made famous in the ’60s by the Argentine singer Leo Dan, was a midtempo ska ballad about undying love, and the final song of the night. The group invites reckless fun. As it played “Chica Banda,” about 40 teenaged fans crowded the stage, jumping on Mr. Albarrán and singing along. If you try to parse Café Tacuba along the usual lines of Anglo-rock sarcasm, it just won’t work. |
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