Overview
After a 10-year hiatus, the beloved Los Angeles trailblazers Mariachi El Bronx are dusting off their charro suits again. The alter ego of punk rock heroes The Bronx, this band’s unexpected headlining career began back in 2008 after the hardcore group sought ways to grow creatively while celebrating the Hispanic music and culture they were surrounded by growing up in Los Angeles. Although seemingly different, the band doesn’t see the genres of punk and mariachi as mutually exclusive - to them, punk and mariachi are spiritually entwined forces rooted in resilient storytelling. “Punk rock and mariachi music are very similar in soul,” says songwriter and lead vocalist Matt Caughthran. “It's working-class music. It’s real music.”
With three acclaimed albums to their name, the eight-piece has shared stages with the Foo Fighters and the Killers, performed everywhere from Letterman to NPR’s Tiny Desk, and lit up festivals from Coachella to Glastonbury. They even lent their sound to TV, recording theme songs for Weeds (“Little Boxes”) and Aqua Teen Hunger Force (“Aqua Something You Know Whatever”). Returning after a decade away felt “joyous and familiar from the jump,” says guitarist Joby J. Ford.
But recording their fourth album, Mariachi El Bronx IV, proved more complex than expected. Within the year that he began writing lyrics, Caughthran contended with the deaths of several loved ones. Additionally, as they tracked at producer John Avila's San Gabriel Valley studio - Avila has helmed all four of their mariachi records - the Eaton Canyon fires blazed across East LA. “We came out of the studio one night, the entire side of the hill was just on fire,” Ford recalls. While dealing with grief in his personal life and within his longtime home of Southern California, Caughthran was also experiencing an enormity of love as he got married that same year.
These clashing emotions of profound loss and overwhelming love shaped the album's themes. The songwriting "started as a battle between love and death but became a way to process "all the chaos of the world," Caughthran says. Throughout Mariachi El Bronx IV’s 12 tracks, the band documents the stories of gamblers, former playboys, warriors, lovers - characters that became vessels for the specific pressures of being alive right now. The contemporary disillusionment with love underscores the “RIP Romeo,” for instance, which Caughthran describes as both the death of Romeo as a figure and a culture in mourning.
That push and pull is palpable on a song like “Forgive Or Forget,” the album’s high-octane opener. Amidst its galloping rhythm, a uniquely hallucinogenic tone emerges from Ray Suen’s violin that complements Caughthran’s lyrics about someone “who’s completely disheveled and a little washed out, looking back on their life in a way that's kind of hazy,” he says. “There's a little bit of hope there, but it's pretty dark.”
Another single, “Song Bird,” tackles a different kind of terror: writer’s block. Caughthran was going through a rough bout of zapped creativity when the band’s Vincent Hidalgo came up with a pulse-quickening guitar line in the studio. To Caughthran, the riff reminded him of a hummingbird flapping its wings - the same bird he'd watch outside his writing window. The block faded instantly as lyrics poured out of his brain: “I was staring at another empty page / Feeling every single second of my age.”
The fighting spirit of Mariachi El Bronx emerges on the Norteño charged “Bandoleros,” which they describe as the “battle cry of the album.” At a time when chaos is surging around the world and close to home, the call to arms that imbues these feelings of courage and righteous indignation. The song concludes on a hard-won note of heroism: “We ride out / No matter how bad it may seem.”
With four albums now under their belts as Mariachi El Bronx, the band still considers itself lifelong students of mariachi; its members strive to continue progressing in their musicianship while paying homage to this storied art form. That reverence carries over to their iconic charro suits, which often attract nearly as much attention as the music itself. The band has long turned to Casa del Mariachi in Boyle Heights - a shop honored by the city as a historic landmark - where Jorge Tello (aka Mr. George) has been handcrafting traditional suits for more than 50 years. "This band has always been about learning and exchanging culture through music and art,” says Caughthran. “That’s what it’s all about! Everything we do comes from the heart and soul.”
Mariachi El Bronx is Matt Caughthran (vocals), Joby J. Ford (guitar, accordion), Jared Shavelson (drums), Keith Douglas (trumpet), Ray Suen (violin), Brad Magers (trumpet), Ken Horne (jarana), and Vincent Hidalgo (guitarrón).
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