With our free press under threat and federal funding for public media gone, your support matters more than ever. Help keep the LAist newsroom strong, become a monthly member or increase your support today .
Fans 'Can Trust' New Los Lobos Album
Listen
• 6:46
Los Lobos is a master of creating moods, of summoning up a setting and putting you in the center of it. From the band's major-label debut Will The Wolf Survive to the new Tin Can Trust, the band has always sung about people who take their pleasures where they can find them, and who lead rich imaginative lives. There's an entire world that opens up in the beautifully languid stroll described in one of the band's finest songs ever, "On Main Street."
One of the most impressive things about this album is the way Los Lobos shifts between a hard-boiled realism and a free, open lyricism. I'm not entirely sure what the lyrics of "Jupiter or the Moon" mean, but I know that the gorgeously eerie soundscape the song creates, with its bluesy ease and lunar jazz coolness, is a world I want to live in for a while.
To be sure, there's a certain fatalism to some Los Lobos music. This album features two songs in which the narrators use the phrase "burning down" to describe a scorched-earth approach to dispatching a troubled past, in hopes of building a better future. Yet, I can't think of an example over 30 years of music-making in which they've resorted to cheap cynicism or knee-jerk nihilism. Melancholy or hopelessness is always tempered by precise detailing, whether it's a guitar line that lifts despair into a thing of beauty, or a lyric suggesting that any state of mind is more complex than mere depression.
Los Lobos save its most audacious song for the end of this album. Called "27 Spanishes," songwriters David Hidalgo and Louie Perez describe it as an attempt to tell "the entire tale of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, blow by blow." I'm staggered to hear that they come awfully close to achieving just that, encased in a quiet, lean, mean blues epic.
Support for LAist comes from
There isn't a false note on Tin Can Trust. It moves with the assurance of men who have the confidence to follow the path of a stray guitar or keyboard riff, pursuing the implications of a simple but tricky phrase like "tin can trust." They let the listener fill in the blanks about what guitars, keyboards, accordion, fiddle and some blunt yet poetic phrases have to say about the lives they see around them, and the lives we all live.
Copyright 2022 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air. 9(MDA1OTI3MjQ5MDEyODUwMTE2MzM1YzNmZA004))
At LAist, we believe in journalism without censorship and the right of a free press to speak truth to those in power. Our hard-hitting watchdog reporting on local government, climate, and the ongoing housing and homelessness crisis is trustworthy, independent and freely accessible to everyone thanks to the support of readers like you.
But the game has changed: Congress voted to eliminate funding for public media across the country. Here at LAist that means a loss of $1.7 million in our budget every year. We want to assure you that despite growing threats to free press and free speech, LAist will remain a voice you know and trust. Speaking frankly, the amount of reader support we receive will help determine how strong of a newsroom we are going forward to cover the important news in our community.
We’re asking you to stand up for independent reporting that will not be silenced. With more individuals like you supporting this public service, we can continue to provide essential coverage for Southern Californians that you can’t find anywhere else. Become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission.
Thank you for your generous support and belief in the value of independent news.
Chip in now to fund your local journalism
(
LAist
)
Trending on LAist
-
The historic properties have been sitting vacant for decades and were put on the market as-is, with prices ranging from $750,000 to $1.75 million. -
Users of the century old Long Beach wooden boardwalk give these suggestions to safely enjoy it. -
The Newport Beach City Council approved a new artificial surf park that will replace part of an aging golf course. -
The utility, whose equipment is believed to have sparked the Eaton Fire, says payouts could come as quickly as four months after people submit a claim. But accepting the money means you'll have to forego any lawsuits. -
The City Council will vote Tuesday on a proposal to study raising the pay for construction workers on apartments with at least 10 units and up to 85 feet high. -
The study found recipients spent nearly all the money on basic needs like food and transportation, not drugs or alcohol.
Best of LAist