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Saturday 6 August 2011

Mariachi El Bronx II

I wrote The Bronx off years ago.
The little I'd heard did nothing for me at the time, and seeing them in a support to 'someone or other' only served to cement in my lacklustre impression of them.
Due to this I've skimmed past them in record store racks, flipped past interviews in magazines and in general never let them darken my door.
So it's no surprise that I never picked up on their side project Mariachi El Bronx where they pay homage to the sounds of the Mariachi bands.
Now here I sit contemplating kicking myself repeatedly for holding onto this blinkered view of them
Put rather simply, Mariachi El Bronx II has just grabbed my attention as firmly as the sashaying backside of a lovely SeƱorita passing by on a summers day would.
I might even have whiplash.
While most Mariachi isn't sung in English the Bronx have really opened it up to a wider audience by stepping away slightly from the traditional path and I thank them for that.
Each song is a dramatically passionate story told with a great deal of panache as we would expect from hot blooded Latino.
Maybe its a bit stereotypically cartoonish in it's delivery, like an Elvis movie soundtrack, but that's not really a criticism as I'm goofing on it none the less.
All in all it has been a lovely little surprise and I think I'll have to check out The Bronx further now as they are obviously not as one dimensional as I previously thought them to be.

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