Los Lobos | COLOSSAL HEAD | CD

Los Lobos: Cesar Rosas, David Hidalgo (vocals, guitar); Louie Perez (guitar, drums); Steve Berlin (saxophone); Conrad Lozano (bass).
Additional personnel: Victor Bisetti, Pete Thomas, Efrain Toro, Yuka Honda.
Producers: Mitchell Froom, Tchad Blake, Los Lobos.
Recorded at Sunset Sound Factory, Hollywood, California.
Recording information: Sunset sound Factory.
Photographer: Jim Douglas .
Unknown Contributor Roles: Pete Thomas ; Efrain Toro; Victor Bisetti; Yuka Honda.
COLOSSAL HEAD is an answer to all those who thought the East LA band of (now) 40somethings may have passed on to the other side of the greatness curve. No such luck. HEAD expands the band's artistic borders--a process begun on 1992's KIKO and continued with the Latin Playboys side project and various film scores--even further away from the Tejano-based, American roots mosaic that Los Lobos had perfected on their way to becoming one of America's finest rock and roll bands.
There are black and white touchstones throughout COLOSSAL HEAD, from Stax soul to Mexican folk music, but they're distorted by avant-garde colors. Genre-less, futuristic pieces like the keyboard-led title track are warmed up by familiar touches--in this case, a fat, fuzzed-up guitar duel that evokes early Santana--while the most conventional, bar-band-ish tunes ("Manny's Bones," "Everybody Loves A Train") are invaded by freakish arrangements and slices of affected dissonance. But the band's inherent rock grooveability, with its stinging guitar solos and rollocking baritone sax, never goes away. Guest keyboardist Yuka Honda (of Cibo Matto) brings some sample-happy textures to the party, producers Tchad Blake and Mitchell Froom provide percussion-heavy applications, and the convention-distorting spirit of Captain Beefheart looms over all.

• Format: CD
• Genre: Pop
• Released: 3/19/1996
• Released: 03/19/1996