Casual observers of the East Los Angeles band Los Lobos may be forgiven for the stereotypical image of a Mexican folk-rock group in the 1980s that played 1950s Ritchie Valens covers: “La Bamba,” “Donna,” and “Come On Let’s Go.”
While it’s true that they enjoyed massive success from their songs appearing on the La Bamba soundtrack in 1987, their influence on modern record-making and song mastery is misunderstood, and their musical efforts have been largely misappropriated in rock’s mainstream consciousness.
The year was 1992, and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Seattle newcomers Nirvana was already a mainstay on radio. Flannel shirts and ripped jeans were the “no image” image being pumped through to the MTV generation. Released on May 26, 1992, Kiko would redefine Los Lobos, single-handedly dismantling the Mexican rock cover band myth in one album.
Produced by Mitchell Froom (Crowded House, Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney) and Los Lobos, Kiko removed the cliched assortment of folk instruments and replaced them with unconventional production techniques utilizing an array of musical gadgets, guitar effects, strange and kooky keyboard sounds, and whacked-out, tipsy horn arrangements.
Photo by pmonaghan, 2013, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
The songs are predominantly and beautifully written by David Hidalgo and Louie Pérez, with occasional contributions from Cesar Rosas and Leroy Preston. The simplicity of a roots-rock blues rhythm combined with a Mexican-American musical leaning was woven into a new type of fabric, held together by visionary producers and studio engineer Tchad Blake (Arctic Monkeys, Peter Gabriel, Tom Waits).
The album kicks off with the iconic drumbeat of “Dream in Blue,” which descends into rhythmic defibrillation of chaotic fits and starts. Drop-dead gorgeous melodies crash into distorted feedback with ominous bass lines providing a new type of musical contortion not seen or heard since Zappa’s poppier moments.
“Wake Up Dolores” feels like a song played backward and then reversed during mix-down—not literally, but in its essence. “Angels with Dirty Faces” also carries that backward feel, making it appealing yet uneasy, while addressing homelessness not politically but through a personal vignette:
Buy Los Lobos: Native Sons (2021)
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“ With one shoe on and one shoe lost
Stands a wounded man who just laughs it off
And the angels with dirty faces go it alone”
(Angels with Dirty Faces)
There are lighter, foot-tapping, John Lee Hooker-type moments like “That Train Don’t Stop Here,” which deals with love gone away, while darker subject matters such as rape (“Reva’s House”), alcoholism (“Whiskey Trail”), and child abuse (“Two Janes”) are handled with honesty and conscience.
“Kiko and the Lavender Moon” is one of the album’s finest musical explorations, best described as Duke Ellington meeting cabaret musicians in a parking lot. It is as unsettling as it is glorious, using light and shade while ultimately hanging unresolved on a knife’s edge.
“Short Side of Nothing” is a song to find solace in: “here I am on the short side of nothing, all alone…. can’t find my way home.” The song speaks of hopelessness and the rootlessness of not fitting into a community or family—a disconnect that melodically ends on an unpredictable E7 chord, leaving the listener wanting more.
“Saint Behind the Glass” and the instrumental “Arizona Skies” are deeply moving and provide welcome deviations in an album that leaves its listener teetering on the edge.
Kiko broke new ground in a time when grunge dominated. In an interview with The Austin Chronicle, the band’s saxophonist/keyboardist, Steve Berlin, reflected:
“Kiko was special because of the thresholds and the barriers that we broke through. I don’t know if there are any of those barriers left. We broke through that shell and we’ve lived on the other side of that every record since.”
“I just think the culture, the way things are now, make it impossible to make a record like Kiko now. Now with lo-fi, there’s a whole genre of records that sound like Kiko. But in 1991, there wasn’t much in terms of mixing hi-fi and lo-fi stuff. I’m not saying we were the first-ever. But it’s certainly the first time we explored the idea of combining something damaged beyond words with something as beautiful as we could make it.”
In 1992, I had never heard anything like Kiko, and I haven’t heard anything like it since. Kiko is surely Los Lobos’s finest record. The album format may have died long ago, but this is possibly one of the last great albums that can be enjoyed in its entirety in one sitting. And yet, they still call themselves “just another band from East LA.”\
Buy Los Lobos: Kiko
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