Cuatro Caminos

Café Tacuba

album cover

A Crowded Crossroads

During the opening moments of "Puntos cardinales," Café Tacuba can be heard flailing away in several different time signatures at once. The percussion instruments offer faint outlines of possible beat patterns—what might be a downbeat in one scheme is an afterthought (or a red herring) in another. Meanwhile, vocalist Rubén "Elfego Buendía" Albarrán sings in a rolling 6/8 meter that crosses the percussion at odd angles. The contrasting elements all float in space until, at 1:26, the refrain kicks in. Then everything abruptly locks into a steady house rhythm, a pulse that gathers the cerebral metric stuff onto a streamlined train and sends it shuttling down the tracks.

That transition is the essence of Café Tacuba, the Mexico City quartet whose albums routinely inspire outsized superlatives from the rock press. Conversant in the rich heritages of Mexican folk and Jamaican ska as well as some of rock's more obscure back pages, Café Tacuba creates exploratory music that's too defiantly danceable for any ivory tower.

Cuatro caminos isn't the trippiest Café Tacuba—that prize goes to the 1999 Reves/Yo soy. But it is the most consistently astounding and, curiously, the most accessible. First, focus on the impossibly catchy refrains, which equal (and often better) the hookcraft of any Anglo rock band. Then listen for the subversive stuff underneath—the churning polyrhythms, brazen detours into dissonance, and explosions of instrumental fury that make this some of the most adventurous stuff in the great wide world of rock.

Genre: World, Mexico
Released: 2003, MCA
Key Tracks: "Eo," "Mediodía," "Que pasara."
Catalog Choice: Reves/Yo soy
Next Stop: Bloque: Bloque
After That: Los Fabulosos Cadillacs: Los fabulosos calavera
Book Page: 138

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About 1,000 Recordings

Celebrate the joy, the revelation, the mystery, the fun, the sheer shivers-up-the-spine pleasure of great music.

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