Los Lobos
Album: Gates Of Gold
Label: Proper
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.loslobos.org

Gates Of Gold is the legendary Los Lobos' first studio album since 2010 and while it won't rank with the band's classic sets it manages to more than pass muster. Not without its share of low points and missed opportunities, though. It must be difficult for any band to come up with the goods time after time over a 40+ year career, and I guess it's been more than incumbent on them to excel on this occasion, but they don't quite make it, despite some quintessential moments and archetypal scenarios.

Even though the lyrics of this new batch of songs for the most part classily configured snapshots of experience from the pen of chief songsmith Louie Perez will obviously stand up to detailed scrutiny, from a purely musical aspect (and on first playthrough especially) much of the album seems to centre around relatively uninspired gestures whether they be misguided vacuous electro soul (There I Go), heavy duty garage rock guitar interludes, or merely workmanlike blues by numbers drags like Mis Treater Boogie Blues and I Believed You So. And the established live favourite La Tumba Sera El Final feels more like a runthrough, a bit of a makeweight.

Even the disc's higher points the tender title track, the folkish Song Of The Sun and closer Magdalena feel to have just a touch of the auto pilot about them. The set gives something of an impression of unfinished business, a statement that doesn't tell the whole story perhaps I can't exactly put my finger on it. Perhaps it was all down to a pressure to get new product out after the long hiatus?…

Whatever, the band's trademark "soundtrack of the barrio" (the time honoured mix of Tex Mex, country, R&B, blues, rock, soul and Hispanic roots) is losing some of its impact and clout and staying power, if not quite dispensing with its drawing power, for it still contains an abundance of energy in its execution, of that there can be no argument. It's just that a distinct sense of déjà entendu pervades much of the music on this disc or maybe I was expecting something a little more special this time round after the long wait.

David Kidman