Café Tacuba Get Back to the Basics.

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by Rebekah Martinez

The sun has steadily risen all day – it has eluded the clouds threatening to choke it. There is steam coming off the asphalt. It burns bare legs, sandaled feet. Still the crowd gathers and gathers, hundreds pressing into one small corner around a hole-in-the-wall stage setup. A drum set is carried out, microphones tapped, tested, and somewhere along the roped off backstage area, band members huddle. You can see them – (most prominently) the soft Afro reminiscent curls of Elfego Buendia – the latest incarnation of Café Tacuba’s lead singer (also known as Ruben Albarran) bouncing back and forth, sometimes peeking out to see who has gathered to watch. It’s always a big kick to see who he’s going to be once he storms the stage but this time it’s going to be different. You can feel it. But that’s par for the course for a man of many personalities.

Mexico City’s favorite alternative rock quartet is performing at this year’s International Festival in Houston, Texas. The festivities, celebrating Mexico with a week full of the intoxicating swirl of the roots of its many cultures – from the mix of food wafting into each other throughout several downtown blocks, the vendors and their beaded/handcrafted/carefully stitched wares, and of course, the music.

The band has been the buzz of the festival months before it started, labeled one of the “must see” acts of the celebration’s final day. When they finally take the stage, Buendia looking cool and collected in a simple maroon shirt and light pants, the opening chords to a song off their latest album (released July 1), the aptly titled Cuatros Caminos, roll out. Already you can tell the album’s title is no accident. By the simplicity of the buzzing guitars, the melodious acuity of their phrasing, and the initially slight, but growing burn of a rock edge, this seems to be the road home for a band that has always handled rock with so much originality.

“What we wanted ultimately, was to play simple songs – back to the basics, four-by-four rhythms, very easy and accessible. We’re not playing with traditional influences like we’ve done in the past,” Albarran says. “The album reflects how we’ve been living these past few years. It comes at a time of change for us – the end of our contract with Warner and the new one with MCA Records, and the time we’ve had off to do individual things.”

The beginning roots of Cuatros Caminos stretch back as far as March 2002, when the band assembled in Mexico City with a collection of 23 songs each member (bassist Enrique Rangel, Joselo, keyboardist Emmanuel Del Real, and Albarran) had written, plus a few written during rehearsals. The not-so-surprising thing about each one was that, despite being written separately and with each member’s own tastes, influences, and originality, many of the songs contained a common, simple rock n’ roll thread. The group collectively chose the ones that better fit their looser vision for the album and made the arrangements as a group. Caminos is proclaimed by Albarran to be the least eclectic of their six albums. The result is a 14-song collection of loose, pliable rock – with nary a folkloric element to be found; instead the key word is electric, with plenty of electric guitar and bass frilling the boundaries (whether it be the stuttering, punk rock edge in “Eo” or the easygoing thrill of “Mediodia”) and the hellacious, nasally charming, ballsy roar Albarran executes on some tracks.

“With every album we try to reinvent ourselves. Some elements will always be there of course, like the sound of my voice for example,” Albarran says. “This time we took a lot of different approaches. It just came together very naturally.” Produced in part by the band, Argentine musician/producer Gustavo Santaolalla (Juanes, Molotov, all of Café’s previous albums) and Anibal Kepler in Los Angeles, Dave Fridmann (the Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev) in New York, and Andrew Weiss (Ween) in Mexico City, each one lent a hand to the album’s uniformity.

“The benefit of just one producer (like Gustavo) is that we know each other and our vision perfectly. With two others, it’s a completely new adventure,” Albarran says. “Andrew [for three songs] brought in a lot of energy, a lot of rock sounds; David [also three songs] was just magic. The way he produces is beautiful. We were surprised in a good way with how it turned out.”

The album finds them reinventing their own concepts as a band as well – for the recording of Caminos they brought in actual drummers (Victor Indrizzo and Joey Waronker) instead of using the drum machines. For their most recent tour they’ve recruited longtime friend Luis Ledesma for percussion duties. The goal was to wrap the already freed perception and execution of the music with a human touch.

“The drummers added warmth and directness to what we feel are spontaneous songs,” Albarran said. Spontaneity is definitely key – it peppers the lyrics even if it (sort of) eludes the album’s overall style. The song’s themes range from the abstract (like “Eo,” about the mood and energy of the dance floor), portraits of moments in time (“Mediodia”), the songwriting process (“Camino y Vereda”) and imaginary characters (“Recuerdo Prestado,” “Amor Dulzura”). As songwriters and artists, it is a much needed outlet for the creativity that is constantly stirring them. As something like legends in the field (with over 11 years of turning out imaginative, highly respectable hit albums behind them), it looks to be another notch in the belt of an already impressive repertoire.

“We just wanted to return to a very real form of writing – we aren’t busy being products for a target,” Albarran says. “The songs have their own lives. They came up because they wanted to. I’ve always said songwriters are a medium. That’s what we are.”

And with the shifting winds of change still overtaking them, is another personality alteration in store?

“My split personalities – it’s a game for me, a way of saying the artist isn’t always the important thing,” he says, laughing. “Each time I reinvent myself I can be free. It’s just another way of renewal and reinvention personally. I’ve found a good place here in creation, right now. We all have. We’re having a good time being the risk takers. Somos aventureros – walking different roads.”

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