Los Lobos: Los Lobos Goes Disney

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Both in their recordings and stage performances, Los Lobos take a child-like pleasure in their playing, so it makes perfect sense for them to produce a CD exclusively devoted to music from Disney movies. Los Lobos Goes Disney is not a children’s album, however, but rather an album for the inner child–and music lover– in all of us.

Right from the start of "Heigh Ho," it’s apparent Los Lobos inhabit the music as much as it inhabits them. An onslaught of percussion gives way to chanting in Spanish, an arrangement that might just as easily adorn one of the band’s originals. The same could be said for "I Wan’na Be Like You," where guttural sax from Steve Berlin plays off against sharp acoustic picking, over more roiling rhythm work. David Hidalgo’s forlorn vocal on "Not in Nottingham" only further illustrates the personal means by which this band from East LA embraces music from Disney’s world.
 

Cesar Rosas’ customarily upbeat approach is as ideally suited to "The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room" as is his counterpart’s on the aforementioned ballad. Goes Disney clocks in at less than forty minutes, so Los Lobos obviously didn’t indulge themselves in much extended improvisation here. Nevertheless, solos such as this organ break succinctly earmarks the track as well as the group’s astute self-production of the project. The sextet are as tasteful as usual throughout, a musicianly virtue manifest in Hidalgo’s corrosive electric guitar on "Grim Grinnin’ Ghosts."

More extensive liner notes regarding the choices of song as well as general conception of Los Lobos Goes Disney would definitely be of interest here. But the fact of the matter is this music speaks for itself, whether in the form of the jaunty fifties rock of "The Ugly Bug Ball" or the samba cum blues ‘n’ jazz of "Cruella De Vil."

 




Los Lobos Goes Disney

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