Town & The City (Dig)

The 13-track set--fittingly, the disc is the 13th studio album of the band's 30-year-plus career--was recorded over the last several months, with the band doing its own production work. Tchad Blake, who's worked with the group for many of its past albums, handled mixing duties. The album partially reflects the East Los Angeles roots-rockers' experience as de facto immigrants in their own country, as well as unease with the current political situation in the land. The band is currently on an open-ended touring schedule, which is typical of their roadwork.

After variously celebrating their 30th anniversary with the star-studded The Ride, documenting their bracing live shows on Live at the Fillmore and doing a little intimate musical retrenchment on the self-released Acoustic En Vivo, Los Lobos returned to the studio with creative exploration on their minds. The result is their most sonically adventurous, thematically taut collection since the heady days of Kiko and Colossal Head. With lyrics penned mostly by multi-instrumentalist Louis Perez, the album's first-person narrative views a myriad of larger issues through slices of local life, from the immigrants' physical and spiritual travails of "The Valley" and "Hold On" to the liturgical grace of "Little Things" and the haunting impressionism of "The City." The musical tack is even more adventurous, a melange of diverse flavors that ranges from the infectious calo Spanglish patois of Cesar Rosa's "Chuco's Cumbia" and neo-norteno "The Road to Gila Bend" to the chunky r&b groove of "Don't Ask Why," the Caribbean-Latin fusion of "No Pueda Mas" and the shadowy, jazz reflectiveness of the "The Town." The Lobos blend it all into a compelling sonic landscape, one that's tamed the playful, psychedelic spirit of Perez and David Hidalgo's free-spirited Latin Playboys side project and focused it into a band context with rich rewards at every turn. -- Jerry McCulley