Cafe Tacvba: SiNo : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Ten songs into their disc, Mexico City's Cafe Tacuba get to the heart of what bugs them most about contemporary times: group conformity. "You're defined by rock or electronica, reggaeton or hip-hop/Or whatever the radio pushes," Ruben Albarren sneers in Spanish over the driving punk of "Estar de acuerdo" ("to be in agreement"). His bratty whine is pure Johnny Rotten. The Sex Pistols aren't the only classic rockers the Tacubas reference on Sino, their first album of new material in four years. The dramatic keyboards and guitars of "53100" invoke Who's Next; the pristine harmonies in the multipart "Volver a Comenzar" ("to begin again"), Pet Sounds; the jaunty folk/prog-rock that complements the irony of "Gracias" winks and nods to early-Seventies Argentinean duo Sui Generis. But the overall sound and freewheeling eclecticism in this fifteen-song set of gentle ballads and angry-rock rants are pure Cafe Tacuba, even if the album lacks one ingredient that's a hallmark of the Tacuba oeuvre for the past fifteen years: the fusion of homegrown ethnic styles into the music.