Artist:     Los Lobos

Album:     Native Sons

Label:     New West

Release Date:     7.30.21

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Los Lobos. The “Wolves” from East LA. The same five multi-instrumentalist virtuosos and charismatic singers—David Hidalgo, Louis Perez, Cesar Rosas, Conrad Lozano, and Steve Berlin—going on 50 years. Still very hungry too, if the dazzling nature of Native Sons is any indication. Los Lobos are uncommonly steeped in—and experts at—all  styles of music surrounding their Mexican heritage. But they also play damn near any variation of the American rock, blues and soul they grew up on, and play it like they invented it.

Los Lobos writes imaginative songs that flow like the breeze, yet can be intensely challenging. They also regularly spin out covers of anyone from the Dead to Queen to Elvis Costello, each spot-on and recognizable, but bearing the unmistakable Wolf brand. Native Sons highlights that side of Los Lobos, as they honor a dozen of their fellow Los Angeles-based inspirations. Songs by the Beach Boys, Barrett Strong, Jackson Browne, Percy Mayfield, and others—dissimilar acts but artists all the way through—flow naturally. Soul-shaking culture beams and blazes through them.

“Love Special Delivery” by Thee Midnighters—one of the first popular Chicano bands from East L.A.—sets the album off like a string of firecrackers snapping in James Brown’s pocket. Cesar Rosas belts it out as if time never entered his equation, the bite in his voice as fierce as David Hidalgo’s guitar playing. Hidalgo’s one of the best, his countless fine licks throughout the album proving it. This band exemplifies the word spicy, no matter the style, but especially when they go the traditional route. Those songs are vivid film screens. “Los Chucos Suaves,” by “Father of Chicano music” Lalo Guerrero, flashes—for me anyway—a scene of a bustling market and a post-fight matador weaving his way through it with startling dance moves. The urgency and excitement are palpable. In a different light, famed Puerto Rican percussionist and composer Willie Bobo (Tito Puente; Santana’s “Evil Ways”) gets his due with “Dichoso” (translation: happy), a lilting, Afro-Cuban jazz ballad sung beautifully by Rosas. On the whole, this album conjures happiness.

Blasting through The Blasters’ Dave Alvin-penned “Flat Top Joint?” That’s happy rock ‘n’ roll, carefree, with ripping guitar, and an undercurrent of honkin’ sax—the works. Sax player Steve Berlin stepped over from the Blasters into Los Lobos 40 years ago, his sound long now an integral component of so many of their songs. Berlin’s car-horn blasts in the garage-rocking classic, “Farmer John,” are Los Lobos DNA in action. But so is the musical and lyrical lamentation that Hidalgo expresses so eloquently in “Native Son,” the one song he co-wrote with Perez in order to illuminate their own significance within the twelve artists they tip their hats to.

Contrasts between Latin music, and American styles, are at once striking, yet blurred throughout Native Sons. Only Los Lobos are capable of that type of entertainment. Fresh renditions of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” and WAR’s “The World is a Ghetto” add measures of social weight, a recapping of issues still in need of ironing out. Expertly recorded, Native Sons presents Los Lobos as an enduring example of multi-national unity, and a musical melting pot still wide-open to possibility.

—Tom Clarke