Cuatro Sonideros

“Feeling claustrophobic is natural when you’ve been in a band for so long,” says Albarrán. “Perhaps our biggest achievement has been the fact that we stayed together. It takes a lot of balls to make compromises.”

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Is the simplicity of Cuatro Caminos an inevitable reaction to the commercial failure of Revés/Yosoy?

“We always assume that people will understand our records,” says Albarrán. “But we’re often wrong. And we were definitely wrong with Revés/Yosoy. We weren’t able to find the appropriate channels for people to connect with the record. We failed to realize that maybe our fans weren’t interested in a CD of instrumental pieces.”

“The disappointment didn’t last long,” he continues. “Internally, as a band, we considered Revés/Yosoy a success, because making it was like medicine to us. It had a healing effect on the way in which we related with music, the way in which we interacted as composers.”

Revés/Yosoy was more than just Tacuba’s defining statement and unquestionable masterpiece. It was also the crowning achievement of the entire Latin-rock genre, its very own White Album, a mystically tinged record that challenges and dares you to embrace its uncompromising nature.

“The record company [Warner Bros.] didn’t quite know what to do with it,” recalls Del Real. “Sure enough, it was a complicated record, somewhat inaccessible. But it also gained us a lot of respect and appreciation. We spent two years touring behind it. Now people know that we’re capable of many different things. After Cuatro Caminos, we could very well do a record that’s all acoustic, or maybe one that draws solely from folklore. Who knows? Even I couldn’t tell you what lies ahead in Tacuba’s future.”

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And the drums?

Ah, those drums. It was Albarrán’s idea to bring them in. And he doesn’t regret it one bit.

“Think of a painter who has a very special relationship with a specific color — say, orange. For a moment in his career, he abandons orange altogether and begins using other colors — blues and greens. When he returns to orange, he will have renewed his relationship to that color. In our case, I felt that it was time to give the sequencers and drum machines a rest. Playing with a live drummer was an amazing discovery for us. The day we return to the drum machines, we will have a completely new perspective on things.”

“At first I felt like I was losing a limb,” says Del Real, who’d been in charge of programming and triggering the sequencers in concert. “With the drummer, we all play louder now. It’s a different experience, but eventually you get used to it and fall in love with the new sonics. I still miss the drum machine, though.”

“Some songs work better than others,” admits Albarrán. “But I’ll gladly exchange that for the enjoyment that we’re experiencing. Perhaps we’re losing something on the artistic side, but that’s okay. What we originally tried to say with the drum machines has been preserved. It’s inside a hard drive or a memory card. We can return to it whenever we please. Maybe that’s why we’re not experiencing the change like a loss, but rather like a breath of fresh air.”

 

Café Tacuba perform at the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday, September 7.