NorteñoBlog

With a career nearly as long as Los Tigres’ and a catalog just as intimidating, San Jose’s own Los Huracanes del Norte have been playing their corridos and love songs for more years than I’ve been alive. Longevity is part of their story. So naturally, their new album on GarMex/Universal is titled #. The cover, you see, is festooned with a bunch of Twitter hashtags you can use to spread your love of Los Huracanes, and most of them seem legit, although tweeter beware: when I looked up #queseoigaesebajosextomipancho, I didn’t get any results. You can be the first, I guess. All those hashtags make for an attractive album cover, and my keen-eyed friend Anthony likes the font they used. Los Huracanes have already hit the U.S. radio top 20 with “Como Tu No Hay Dos,” a sad country waltz played amid a surreal video landscape of inverted toilet plungers. Their reach also extends to #Manástylepopballadswithsopranosaxleads, as evidenced on last year’s #1 “Cero a la Izquierda.”

NorteñoBlog is more excited about the cruel drunks in Banda Cuisillos, whose “Cerveza” is getting some Mexican radio play. “Cerveza” is one big insult from the narrator to a woman he meets in the bar; he basically tells her, “I’m so drunk even you look good.” Since this is likely the least romantic sentiment ever recorded, “Cerveza” does not appear on Cuisillos’ new album Siempre Románticos (Musart/Balboa). So far, though, the songs they did include sound terrific. These include the Pick to Click “De La Noche a la Mañana,” which could turn into early-’80s hi-NRG workout music with a few tweaks to its instrumentation, and a cover of Grupo Cañaveral’s turn-of-the-millennium cumbia “Tiene Espinas el Rosal.” Plus their album cover looks like the Luck Dragon from Neverending Story puked up some calendar art. This should obviously be considered high praise.

New El Komander! (I feel like I say this every week.) “El Pollo” (Twiins) isn’t quite as lifeless as whichever ballad was his last single, but neither is it as loose-limbed as the two other shambolic singles he released earlier this year, “Fuga Pa’ Maza” and the radio hit “Malditas Ganas.” In other words, it will not make you calypso when you chicken. On the other hand, NorteñoBlog firmly supports the idea of releasing lots and lots of shambolic singles like the Libertines or whoever, and will therefore listen to whatever Sr. Rios hands us before handing him back a big old NO VALE LA PENA.