May 23 - 30, 1 9 9 6

Los Lobos: Back into the Fold

Colossal Head (Warner Bros.) is the first proper Los Lobos album since 1992's Kiko. Between the two releases, the band's main songwriting team of David Hidalgo and Louis Pérez cut a brilliant and daring side project with Kiko producer Mitchell Froom and engineer Tchad Blake (the pair have also worked with artists from Richard Thompson to Cibo Mato). Calling themselves and their 1994 album Latin Playboys, they mixed and matched Kiko outtakes and other cultural detritus for mood pieces as haunting and evocative as any dose of "magical realist" fiction.

Colossal Head brings the foursome back into the fold by joining that spirit of loose experimentation with the more conventional R&B styles favored by Los Lobos' other songwriter, Cesar Rosas. The combination is so successful, it's sometimes hard to tell the composers apart. From the sweet Afro-Cuban lilt of "Maricela" to the fat gut-bucket rock of "Life Is Good" to the small slew of straight hard blues numbers, everyone is as steeped in the history of black music as if they were Jagger and Richards making Sticky Fingers. That's not hyperbole, either. Hidalgo, Pérez, and Rosas may not have the same thrilling reach as the 1971 Glimmer Twins, but they sound just as gritty, commanding, and inspired.

With this achievement, Los Lobos have crowned more than a dozen years of impressive recordings and two decades of making music together. They've maintained their inspiration, however, only because over time they've learned how to let go of their received notions of rock and roll. Instead of continually trying to match the freshness and impact of their landmark 1984 debut, How Will the Wolf Survive?, they've abandoned the search for soaring pop songs and sweeping statements in favor of an improvisational, instinctual approach that, despite their exemplary musical skills, is almost antithetical to the norms of professional pop.

Colossal Head demonstrates this admirable, unusual trait with music that is some of the hardest, biggest rock they've ever recorded and also some of the most unkempt and provisional. They're not playing for the arena gig, or for that matter for the outdoor stage (their so-so set at the Hatch Shell last month), or even a spacious bookstore (the equally so-so set at Borders Books and Music at Downtown Crossing the night before the Hatch show). Instead, they're playing for themselves and one another -- for the love of their rich heritage, for the simple need to pass it on, and for the not-so-simple need to transform it. I'm sorry they can't always put that across live (though I've seen them do it), but maybe that would be asking for both professionalism and anti-professionalism at once. If they ever figure out that trick, they'll have to change their name to Los Bodhisattvas.

-- Franklin Soults