Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, La Luz Del Ritmo
Los Fabulosos Cadillacs are still making salsa, ska, and more kick like hard rock
A decade and a half since they unleashed "El Matador," just maybe the world's greatest rock single of the '90s, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs are still making salsa and ska and assorted subspecies of South American carnival music and middle-Eastern emotionalism kick like hard rock. On La Luz del Ritmo, they set deep Jamaican rhythms to a "hey ho let's go" bleacher-beat in "Flores," mix tough Latin syncopation with blues-rock wah-wah in "El Genio Del Dub," affix turntable scratches onto Blood Sweat & Tears spinning-wheel funk in "Malbicho," reconnect surf music to its south-of-the-border roots in "El Fin De Amor."
And that's not even where they're most blatant. The album features two updates of new-wave-era, dance-oriented-rock classics: If reviving the glam-stomping Clash smash "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" seems slightly redundant 20 years after Los Cadillacs retooled the seemingly more relevant "Revolution Rock," Ian Dury's seminally horny pub-disco "Wake Up And Make Love With Me" counts as inspired cover material. Beyond that, La Luz churns up oil-can drums, manly exclamations, war whoops, even a pinch of country twang; "My Muy Temprano" has drunken jazz breaks opening into wide dub pockets, and the set closes with a Saudi Arabian spaghetti-western reggae New Orleans funeral wake. All of which makes clear that these multi-directional old Argentineans aren't dead yet.
