Manu Chao

Each Manu Chao album is like a diorama in miniature: his self-contained musical universe continually recycles beats and melodies, revisiting troubling themes and doing it all with such jangling, polyglot panache that it dazzles rather than bores you. La Radiolina burns hotter than usual, as if he's hiding a piece of charcoal in his cheek that's singeing every word he sings. The result skews closer to Chao's punk rock roots in its breathless rhythms and urgent electric guitars, and the culprit, of course, is politics -- but Chao's fingerpointing is a cry from the soul, not an activist rant.

In 2001, Euro rocker Manu Chao celebrated his fortieth birthday with the most miraculously
accessible album in the history of "world music." Proxima Estacion: Esperanza, a buoyant,
melodically linked rhythm suite in three languages, now seems such a natural fact that you
may listen a while to its very-long-awaited follow-up before you remember that Proxima
Estacion too had to sink in. But eventually La Radiolina's more guitar-based sonic... More >

In 2001, Euro-rocker Manu Chao celebrated his fortieth birthday with the most miraculously accessible album in the history of "world music." Proxima Estacion: Esperanza, a buoyant, melodically linked rhythm suite in three languages, now seems such a natural fact that you may listen awhile to its very long-awaited follow-up before you remember that it too had to sink in. But eventually the more guitar-based sonics here will feel inevitable too, especially once you follow the same dynamic riff through three consecutive songs up front. The attention getter, especially in Anglophone America, will be "Rainin' in Paradize," which curtly explains why country after country in Africa and the Middle East is "no good place to be." But anyone with some high school French can parse "Besoin de la Lune"'s two-minute catalogue of simple human needs just after that--and then wonder what the hell language "El Kitapena" is in (Catalan? Galician Portuguese?). Most of the second half is in Spanish, including an anti-fame song and one that seems to reference heavy rains in Ecuador. Its true subject, however, is the return of that riff--which definitely makes you want to learn more about Ecuador. (Grade - *** 1/2)