Blogs

Various Artists Well Deep: 10 Years of Big Dada (Big Dada)

Longevity in hip-hop is increasingly rare, so milestones should be memorialized. Enter Well Deep, two CDs (31 tracks total) marking the first decade of U.K.-based indie label Big Dada. An offshoot of the quick-cut quarry known as Ninja Tune (home to Coldcut, Kid Koala, etc.), Big Dada has spent its dime of time offering gutter bangers and lyrical trepanning. Initially a showcase for establishing U.K. MCs in their own rite (helping cement the status of Roots Manuva, TY and Wiley, among others), Big Dada expanded its reach to France (TTC), Philly (Diplo, Spank Rock) and beyond. Of course, considering the label's Anglo origins, it's not farfetched to credit Well Deep as a play on "well" not only as a synonym for "skillfully," but also meaning a source of water, as Big Dada pulls from a deep pool of talent.

Such a forward-thinking label should be discussed in less antiquated terms, however. If we're equating hip-hop to the game-console wars, the mainstream is a PlayStation 3 and the indies are a Nintendo Wii. While most hip-hop is so single-mindedly concerned with maximal visuals—finding it hard to develop forward-thinking engines for its platform—a label such as Big Dada emphasizes rock-solid game and body mechanics over touting specs for specs' sake. Instead of convoluted electronics, you get a focus on flow in its many forms.

Roots Manuva, TY, Infinite Livez and New Flesh establish the touchstones of British boom-bap, with its low end in the frayed dance halls, boots-knockin' swerve and future funk's airlocks. With their productions candied and crunchy like some sort of Honeycomb cereal for the earhole, MCs including Wiley, Majesticons, Infesticons, Busdriver, Spank Rock and TTC spit glitchy electro-cution. Beats go from schizophrenetic (Lotek HiFi, Shadowless) to minimalist and mentalist (cLOUDDEAD remixed by Boards of Canada, Bigg Jus). Lyrical sneers and dubby snare flares are the ballast, and overall, Well Deep is the buoy for charting a course into eclectric hip-hop's deep waters. -- Tony Ware

As Tall as Lions
Into the Flood
01:18-02:03 of “Into the Flood”

Hmm… I’m thinking a bit of Slowdive, maybe a dash of Counting Crows and a taste of the Fray. What kind of soup does that make? Utter, replaceable crap soup. Thanks a lot dudes. You totally owe me 45 seconds of my time. I’m going to go shit out a shoegaze album and pray I can build a time machine so I can travel back to 1991 to make this record relevant.

Boxcutter
Glyphic
00:25-01:10 of “Kaleid”

This is the sound that I imagine that the Internet makes when a lot of people are looking up Aphex Twin on Google. Totally relaxed and pleasant but I’m not sure how because these abrasive tones should be making my ears bleed. Hmm… this makes me want a cupcake. Excuse me.

Megan McCauley
Better than Blood
02:20-02:55 of “Tap That”

Holy crap, this is every teenage, angst driven girl, with religious parents dream! And every cocky, cynical, music reviewer’s wet dream! The chorus, “You come out here and play with me, let me be your (something) fantasy, yeah I kind of like that, I wanna tap that,” screams irony and hilarity at every point. See, she’s saying, “tap that,” because dude-bro’s say “tap that.” She’s mocking your backwards cap and Crocs with painful irony! Sweet irony and dyed red stripy hair! Watch out Avy!

My Hero is Me
Helen of Troy
02:30-03:15 of “When Animals Write Poetry

You know back in the day there used to be tons of screaming/sometimes singy hardcore bands — Saetia, Early Grace, blah blah blah, I think they had a name for it. It’s weird that bands still emulate this. I mean, watch this: one two three…metal guitar, screaming, acoustic metal guitar, singing. Bam, put a witty song title in there and blamo, you got yourself a ’90s hardcore record.

Pitbull
The Boatlift
00:00-00:45 of “Ying & Yang”

First off I have to point out that this is one of only two songs that doesn’t have a guest on it. I’m not joking. Anyway, I’m gonna shake it and shake and shake it ‘cause this is something that could only maybe possibly sound good on a huge stereo in an Escalade. So if I bounce up and down maybe I can imitate that.
— Thorin Klosowski

Avenged Sevenfold Avenged Sevenfold

In the past, Avenged Sevenfold's meathead simplicity pretty much excused all its bad behavior and even worse musical choices. It was as if the five members picked up, pored over and appropriated the Metal Band Rulebook before ever learning a single guitar chord. But that's what California metal is all about: Look good first, hone chops later. On its new self-titled opus (a sure sign these guys want to be taken seriously as artists), A7X not only produces itself, it also hauls everything from string section to children's choir into the studio to help secure its vision. And while the results can be muddled, overcooked and just plain clunky, you gotta hand it to anyone who has the balls to unleash an eight-minute song called "A Little Piece of Heaven" that includes ethnic horns, Orange County ska-punk and a flapper-era dance groove — all before the chorus even kicks in. -- Michael Gallucci

Details: Avenged Sevenfold performs with Operator, the Confession, and Black Tide Sunday, November 25 at Revolution, 200 W Broward Blvd, Ft Lauderdale. The show starts a 7:00 p.m., and tickets are $26. All ages are welcome. Visit www.jointherevolution.net or www.ticketmaster.com.

Various Artists
Tango Around the World
Putumayo

Although the roots and tradition of Tango hails from the streets and concert halls of Buenos Aires, its influence has been felt throughout the world thanks to the dedicated efforts of musicians like Astor Piazzola, who developed the genre and conquered audiences wherever he performed. On this newest Putumayo release, Tango Around the World you see the results of that from “Dimba,” the opening track from Senegal's Ousmane Touré, who sings the beautiful melody in his native Wolof. Electronic sounds and Portuguese instruments are the basis for Lisbon-based singer Liana on “Estrela da Tarde” (Afternoon Star). In addition to that, her dramatic vocal style gives added poignancy to the lyrics, which speak of a torrid afternoon affair that might have tragic consequences.
Fortuna's “Tango Idishe” is probably the strangest mix on this disc – it is sung in Yiddish with a klezmer-like feel, but the group surprisingly does not hail from Israel. Instead, they come from southern Brazil, where there is a strong Jewish and Eastern European presence. Traditionalists will appreciate “Pena,” sung by Argentina's Federico Aubele, and of course Hugo Díaz' beautiful rendition of “Mi Buenos Aires Querido (My Darling Buenos Aires), a favorite tune popularized by Carlos Gardel.
Overall, this is an enjoyable disc proving that tango, though a property of Argentineans, can also be transformed and adapted wherever you go. --- Ernest Barteldes

Booka Shade: DJ Kicks (!K7)

Henrik Schwartz: Live (!K7)

Ricardo Villalobos: Fabric 36 (Fabric)

It used to be so easy for DJs. Refine a set over a couple of years, license the necessary tracks, mix them all together and voilà! Genres were born, scenes were codified and superstar DJs were crowned. Lately, though, the mix-CD landscape has shifted radically. It's harder than ever to encapsulate a genre: By the time you think you've got a handle on bloghouse, Simian-Justice-KRFT has uploaded a new Digital Data Noize remix. And mixing these days? Forget it. Every 14-year-old with BitTorrent can grab Ableton and begin to make mash-ups in minutes. Still, the mix CD endures. And that's because, to be frank, DJs are professionals. It's their job.

Er, well...for Booka Shade (Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier), it isn't, actually. They're producers, not DJs. Good thing, then, that the !K7 label doesn't discriminate. It's been asking artists of dubious DJ provenance to contribute to its DJ Kicks series for a number of years now (among the most recent: Four Tet, Annie, Erlend Øye, Hot Chip). Luckily, Booka have a trick up their sleeve—something that separates the duo from teenage torrenters. In mixing their wide-ranging set, Booka have decided to use their own rhythm tracks to connect some of the dots. (How else do you think the Tubes flow so easily into Brigitte Bardot, or they're able to find their way unharmed out of two John Carpenter tracks?)

Of course, when Booka get too cute—stopping mid-mix for a five-and-a-half-minute detour into Aphex Twin's "Alberto Balsam," for instance—it doesn't quite work. But they somehow come out by mix's end successfully having traversed '70s Eurodisco (Cerrone), '80s new pop (Heaven 17), '90s techno (Carl Craig) and '00s U.K. garage (the Streets) pretty much unscathed. Pretty good for a couple of beginners.

Fellow German Henrik Schwarz takes a slightly different approach on his newest mix CD. Live, despite its name, is a painstakingly constructed album, culled from gigs in 16 cities and edited together in his studio in Berlin. Unlike many electronic musicians who DJ for club audiences, Schwarz primarily plays live sets of his own productions. As such, the album is composed almost solely of (mostly previously released) original tunes and remixes, aside from the progressive funk of Mandrill's "Mango Meat" and Sun Ra's lockstep "Lullaby for Realville."

Those two tracks aren't accidents, by the way. Schwarz's deep house is just as much a direct descendant of Louis Armstrong as it is of Little Louis Vega; his productions here more often than not feature a jazzy Rhodes piano, chiming marimbas and soulful vocals. What allows Schwarz to improvise so successfully? That ever-present four-four beat. When asked recently in an interview whether he might ever be interested in making non-dance music, Schwarz answered, "Well, I was planning to do that, but it seems to be very hard for me to get rid of the straight bass drum. I'm trying hard...to make music that's rooted in dance music but is not dance music."

That quote is probably the most apt description for Ricardo Villalobos' dance-music creations these days. Villalobos started his career as a rather average house producer in the mid-'90s, but since 2000's "Que Belle Epoque" 12-inch, he's incorporated the Latin-American syncopations of his birth country (Chile) with the minimal techno of his country of residence (Germany). It's a formula that's worked well: Villalobos currently sounds like no one else working in electronic music—and he's one of its most popular personalities because of it. Well, that and his reputation for closing out after-after-after-parties 36 hours after the original one started.

Fabric 36, Villalobos' newest mix, takes Booka Shade's and Schwarz's ideas one step further: It's solely composed of his own never-before-released original compositions. It is, in a sense, his new album and his new mix. (Villalobos seems no longer interested in traditional releases; his latest single was the 38-minute-long Balkan cumbia techno masterpiece "Fizheuer Zieheuer.") Early on, Fabric 36 works the same hypnotic effect that the slow-moving "Fizheuer" did—it doesn't seem to be interested in much more than its intricate sound design.

Midway through, however, he introduces vocalist Jorge Gonzáles and the positively Proustian "4 Wheel Drive," in which I think the refrain goes, "The sound of kissing/The smell of grease [Greece? Grapes? Crepes?!?]/(No idea)/A shiny bit of skin." It's soon followed up by an out-of-nowhere Japanese drum solo and, later on, what sounds like a Chilean football chant—all of which is filtered through his peculiar sensibility. That's a good thing and ultimately what could help save the DJ mix CD from complete irrelevance. When people continue to twist the confines of what a mix CD can be, it's gonna get weird—and awesome. Because "confusion," as Gonzáles puts it, "is next to happiness." -- Todd Burns

So it stands to reason that there’s only one American Gangster album that people should be interested in and that’s Jay-Z’s new release. It’s his second full length album post retirement and it’s not getting the greatest of reviews, partly because it’s his second full length album post retirement and the first one was bad enough. Why are we telling you this? Because if you’ve got a big heart, the powers-at-be want you to think there are two American Gangsters worth learning about this week: Jay-Z (the second best rapper alive—props to Lil Wayne) and Frank Lucas, played by Denzel Washington in the film American Gangsters. That movie is raking in cash by the boatload (at the box office and with bootleggers), while Jay-Z’s album of the same name is getting lots of buzz on it’s own. But still, there’s a third American Gangster that you need to know about and we’re not talking about George W. Bush.
Hank Shocklee, of Bomb Squad and Public Enemy fame, was intricately involved in the scoring of the aforementioned film and the soulful jams that emerge on American Gangster’s official soundtrack are worth some recognition of their own.
Shocklee not only produces two new tracks for Anthony Hamilton, "Stone Cold" and "Do You Feel Me" but he also works up four brand new tracks of his own that are great mood setters. "Checkin Up On My Baby" with its 1960's "Green Onions" feel seems like something Booker T and the MG's would have cooked up. "Nicky Barnes" is all seventies gangster and seems like it would fit right in with any blaxploitation film of that era. What's interesting is that Shocklee got the nod for this project in the first place. Known mainly for his stellar work with Public Enemy, the six ditties that Shocklee coughs up on this soundtrack are way outside of hip-hop's hemisphere and broad enough to make Hank an American Gangster in my eyes any day.
There's also a solid collection of old school grooves including Sam and Dave's "Hold On I'm Coming" and Bobby Womack's "Across 110th Street" that make this one of the most enjoyable soundtracks to come out all year. -- Jonathan Cunningham

Jay-Z
American Gangster (Roc-A-Fella)

American Gangster is one hell of a comeback album. For Diddy. Alongside his production team, The Hitmen, Sean Combs produces the album’s hottest tracks, “Pray,” and “Roc Boys (And The Winner Is),” outshining hit makers like the Neptunes and Jermaine Dupri. As for Jay-Z, let’s hope he finally makes good on his promise to retire. It’s not that this wasn’t a good premise. Jay saw an advanced screening of the namesake flick, the story goes, and was inspired to write a batch of songs. But instead of focusing on the movie’s subject, Harlem heroin dealer Frank Lucas, the album is almost all about Jay – the old, drug-dealing Jay, that is. While musically more solid than his last CD, Kingdom Come – on which Jay ruminated on his monied, corporate existence -- American Gangster nonetheless feels less authentic. The emphasis on his hustling days is a calculated attempt to recapture the hunger of his debut, Reasonable Doubt. “This is the ignorant shit you like,” he raps on “Ignorant Shit.” It’s too bad the man who some call the greatest emcee ever feels the need to pander to his audience. -- Ben Westhoff

You know, Radiohead, I was just about to go to sleep when I checked my email one last time. And lo and behold, the download code for your new CD, In Rainbows, popped up in my inbox. *sigh* I didn't need sleep anyway.

Since the rest of the blogosphere is racing right now to review Rainbows, I figure I'd be a sheep and do the same thing. Let's do a time-lapse chronicle of the proceedings. First listens, of course. While addled by fatigue. And I haven't checked YouTube or bootleg sites for which of these songs have been released before, so excuse me if some of this is old news. (I saw Radiohead in a high school auditorium in 1997, so I have cred.)

12:30 a.m.: Link shows up. Among the technical mumbo jumbo is the phrase: WE HOPE YOU ENJOY 'IN RAINBOWS'.

12:37 a.m. Zip file downloaded and unzipped. Fire up iTunes!

12:43 a.m. Fire up iTunes, take two. Had to get some carrots and water.

12:45 a.m. "15 Step" is the first song. Drum-n-bass beat that goes right into a curling guitar riff that's very "Paranoid Android"-style minimalist. Thom Yorke's sounding theatrical. Ooh, now his vocals feature some cool echoes soon after two minutes, things get very glitchy and staticky, but cinematic -- like a staticky television. Children(?) are heard crying in the background, sorta like a muted Go! Team song. Spooky organ outro. Overall could be an outtake from Yorke's solo record, and also very Amnesiac.

12:49 a.m. "Bodysnatchers." Holy crap, it's Sonic Youth. Super fuzzy, driving guitar and Yorke monotone singing, a la Thurston Moore. "I've no idea what I'm talking about," Yorke howls, in his upper, Wayne Coyne-like register. Wordless howling, as the music bends and builds around him, with some corrugated riffs layered atop the driving noise. Oh man, I bet this song is insane live.

12:52 a.m. A bit after two minutes, a bridge emerges, with guitar that's totally still SY's Dirty. Yorke's chanting; he's singing too fast for me to type. Yorke mumbles "ma ma ma ma ma ma" at the end -- you can just picture him shaking his head back and forth in that spastic way he does -- as clicking drums and then a huge wall of psych-distorto guitar ends the song. Awesome.

12:53 a.m. "Nude." Quiet strings rise up, as Yorke croons like an elderly ghost, and trip-hop beats throb. Is he saying, "Don't get bitter"? Keyboards pipe in now, somber keyboards, a la "Talk Show Host." This is totally a slow jam, albeit a haunted waltz in a cobweb-filled parlor.

12:56 a.m. Ooh, at 2:37, a big huge crescendo of strings. Yorke amps up the creaky crooning; one can picture him wearing a faded, dusty tuxedo, singing "Send in the Clowns" or something. Sad, mournful strings end the song -- vaguely Moby-ish.

12:57 a.m. Kind of a math-rocky beginning to "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi," insistent rhythms that are somewhat reminiscent of Minus the Bear, with plenty of warm keyboards boiling in the background. The first song I feel really moved by: Yorke sings, "Why should I istay here? Why should I stay? I would be crazy not to fall / Fall where you lead" (Is he saying leave?) Your eyes / They turn me."

Ministry
The Last Sucker
(13th Planet/Megaforce)

If The Last Sucker is, as leader Al Jourgensen says, Ministry's swan song, fans are not left wanting. From the assault of opener "Let's Go," the album recalls the thick groove and overall intensity of The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste, churning through downtuned heavyweights like "Life Is Good" and Uncle Al's trademark sarcasm on "The Dick Song" ("Run run run, Cheney's got a gun"). The heart of the album is the speed metal drumming and pummeling guitars that drove 2004's Houses of the Mole, all building to "Roadhouse Blues," when the band throws down the hammer and rips through quite possibly their best cover. Closer "End of Days Pt.2," which samples Eisenhower's farewell address, is a masterful reflection of apocalyptic paranoia, and the most dynamic and expressive tune in Ministry's entire catalog. Aside from Jourgensen's self-appointed ­station as a prophet of doom, it's a ­fitting cap to a career that has pulsed, throbbed and evolved through 25 years of gleeful depravity.The Last Sucker is the closest thing to a pure rock album Ministry has done; it feels organic and even warm at times. Although it took an entire discography of hits and misses to get a good look at the band's human side, Last Sucker proves that the wait — and the ride — has been worthwhile. -- Chris Henderson

Autumn To Ashes
Holding a Wolf By The Ears
Vagrant

Note to all you would-be rock scribes. When you’re reviewing a group fronted by the band’s drummer, have your earplugs handy. Drummers tend to crank up the volume and you don’t want premature hearing loss to hamper your career. Okay, maybe we’re generalizing here. Or maybe not. Take Autumn to Ashes for instance. Now wholly under the direction of singer, songwriter and drummer Francis Mark, they’re to subtlety what George W. Bush is to credibility. Indeed, Death Metal as a genre is alive and well within the tumultuous confines of Holding a Wolf By The Ears, the band’s fourth full-length opus and first since Mark took over the helm. His singing, or, more accurately, his spew, sounds like something akin to your roommate’s retching after an all night binge. That’s appropriate, considering the fact that the entire album seems more or less the aural equivalent of an especially merciless hangover. Credit the band for holding true to their hardcore credo, with opening assault “Deth Kult Social Club” initiating the strident, unrelenting outpour that continues unabated throughout the set as a whole. Never mind that it’s all but impossible to tell one tirade… err, track… from another. Then again, if it’s melody and nuance you’re after, From Autumn To Ashes aren’t about to provide the trajectory that gets you there. – Lee Zimmerman

Holding A Wolf By The Ears

The “World” section at your local music retailer is just a way to pile together all the stuff that isn’t from America or the UK. It really isn’t fair that Bossanova joints can be found right next to some Riverdance jams, but English-born Sri Lankan M.I.A.’s latest, Kala, truly deserves to be called a World album.

She proposes in her new disc that this is the Third World Democracy, and there’s no arguing here. M.I.A. did a lot of jumping from continent to continent for this one, and the end result captures the musical flavor of several different cultures and manages to infuse them with booming 808s and frantic rhythms.

“Bird Flu,” “Boyz,” and “Hussel” highlight the music of Africa. No, not like hip-hop R&B, but AFRICA (click on link to see Jamie Foxx explain). “Jimmy” and “Bamboo Banger” reworks Bollywood samples to get your rump on the dancefloor with a heaping bowl of chutney,and “Mango Pickle Down River” sounds like an Aboriginal “Paul Revere” with didjeridoos where Mike D expects fish and mangos rather than your cash and jewelry.

Globalization aside, Kala can pound you over the head with furious dance rhythms so unavoidable you’ll either burn your eyeballs out of your sockets with a Bic lighter from the annoying agony, or just get up offa that thang and do your best Night at the Roxbury impression. M.I.A. does provide slower pace for all you headnodders with “Paper Planes” and Timbaland-produced “Come Around,” but seem kinda boring juxtaposed to the 120 BPM-plus bangers on this disc. The final product is a fierce offering with a lot of bold, creative sound that’s accessible to whatever hemisphere you find yourself. --Oscar Pascual
Check the vid below to see M.I.A. working her mojo.

Against Me! New Wave

Gainesville's Against Me! shares a hometown with Lynyrd Skynyrd and, discounting the redneck caricature Skynyrd became after frontman/spiritual leader Ronnie Van Zant's 1977 death, a lot more: a keen eye for the flaws of leaders and those being led alike, and songs with sentiments as potent as their melodies. Singer Tom Gabel has the same populist ethos and thick-necked vocals of the Dropkick Murphys' Al Barr and Mike Ness; epic stalemate saga "White People for Peace" may be the best song Social Distortion never wrote. Against Me! certainly won't be contributing to the George W. Bush Presidential Library fund anytime soon — i.e., ever — but New Wave goes beyond the simple polemics of so much post-American Idiot punk to suggest ordinary citizens may be as much to blame for America's current predicament as the present administration. (Or almost, anyway.) On "Americans Abroad," Gabel likens his band's European tour to the encroachment of corporations like McDonald's: "Profit-driven expansion into foreign markets," he sings. "While I hope I'm not like them, I'm not so sure." But New Wave's best songs have little to do with politics. The infectious "Thrash Unreal" is a devastating portrait of the girl next door — any girl next door — imprisoned by unfortunate choices. "Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart," a heartsick duet between Gabel and Tegan Quin of Canadian indie sprites Tegan & Sara, resembles nothing so much as a beefed-up Rilo Kiley song, and "Stop!" uses an airtight disco beat lifted from Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" to urge responsible decision-making. For both political and personal reasons, New Wave is a lock for the short list of 2007's best albums and, presumptuous as it sounds right now, quite possibly the decade. It really is that good. -- Chris Gray

This little disc just landed at the New Times office today--straight from Osaka, Japan and it's already got a few of us dancing. Of course, it's past 6pm and those of us still here are minutes away from cracking beers and laughing the night away so we might as well have good music to aid the process. Entitled WAO--the new disc from recent high school graduates Oreskaband is full of pomp, pride, and horn-filled party time ska. It's adventurous for a group of 17 and 18-year-olds in Osaka to start aping the sounds of Southern California, but damn if they aren't good at it. Stand-out songs include "Knife and Fork," "20 Tips" and "MONKEY MAN (MONKEY monkey MAN)" but all 13 tracks on this disc have a sensible appeal that's ready for summertime backyard bbq's and hipster kids eager to ride the next wave of coolness. Frankly, the six girls in Oreskaband look like ahead-of-the-curve J-hipsters smart enough to start flipping pop-punk and ska to their own audible tastes. Who knew you'd have to actually cross the Pacific to hear ska make a comeback. Check out the clip below for more evidence. --Jonathan Cunningham

Tegan & Sara
The Con (Vapor/Sire)

The musical output of Canadian twins inevitably carries with it a vaguely alien air. One can just imagine Tegan & Sara in Montreal and Vancouver, respectively, engaging in some seizure-like sibling communication and spontaneously birthing The Con.

Nothing so medievally weird happened, of course, although it would make a good episode of Behind the Music. The sisters wrote their new material apart from one another, then fine-tuned everything into nuanced pop capsules. A 14-song affair where no track lasts much longer than three minutes, The Con is terse and colorful. "Relief Next to Me" starts out with playful pop hijinks before reeling into some Stevie Nicks-style drama awash in emotionally confrontational lyrics. Immediately afterward, "The Con" launches into more instrumentally dense pop, where any remnant of precious vocals is abandoned for raw delivery. "Back in Your Head" has some of the catchiness that defined "Walking With a Ghost" off So Jealous, while "Hop a Plane" channels bittersweet '90s power pop. "Dark Come Soon" stands out as one of the more polished and beautiful songs on the album, and the lyrics dissect conflicting feelings about love and isolation.

Even as Tegan & Sara become more restrained stylistically, they remain open as a band, maintaining an air of exploration throughout the new record. For this alone, they're forgiven the occasional lapse into questionable, Madonna-like British accents on The Con. -- Evan James

Alejandro Fernandez
Viento A Favor (Wind In My Favor)
SONY BMG

It’s a relatively different Alejandro Fernandez than what the masses have grown accustomed to after 15 solo albums and a career that has spanned the same number of years.

But it also showcases a musically evolving and fresh sounding Fernandez, who willingly expands his horizons while maintaining a touch of his ethnicity with a sprinkle of mariachi guitars and trumpets.

For the last several years the ranchera prince/pop balladeer beefcake has reached a lofty status – and at the same time been vilified in Mexico - by infusing traditional Mexican music with commercial pop. Fernandez gets even riskier with Viento A Favor as the 12-track production features romantic ballads and dance tunes with plenty of pop and rock flourishes produced by the ever-creative Aureo Baqueiro.

It also highlights a more mature sounding Fernandez – with the same vocal capacity – despite the album’s light texture and somber tone. “Te Voy A Perder” (I’m Going To Lose You) in which he implores a love interest not to leave because there are still many promises to fulfill, offers intimate lyrics that Fernandez conveys tenderly and with heart-warming ease over Baqueiro’s light acoustic piano. There is more of the same in “Amenaza De Lluvia” (Threat of Rain), another lyrically gripping ballad that Fernandez turns into his own playground of pain by convincingly drawing out verses like “Hay amenaza de lluvia en mi Corazon”/”There’s a threat of rain in my heart” with utmost conviction.