El Guincho: "Hindou"

Bands just don’t go out to pasture like they used to. There’s Robert Pollard’s compulsive album releasing issues, or Thurston Moore’s neverending noise (just get old and write a melody, for fuck’s sake), or even Dinosaur Jr., skronking it out like Candlebox, Creed, and Nickelback never existed. Young El Guincho, on the other hand—he’s already got the steel drums and late-period Clash pseudo-crooning ready and packed for the assisted living home. In the lifetime’s worth of blog years since Alegranza! (2008), he’s been living the high life, apparently, and on Piratas de Sudamerica Pablo Diaz-Reixa’s latent Manu Chao stylings come to the fore, the album a thoroughly chilled batch of reggae-lite exotica, perfect for the unassuming Latin bar down the street.

In some ways, Guincho’s skipped straight to Manu Chao’s current arena-filling feelgoodery. Chao’s La Radiolina (2007) submerged his hypnotic acoustic grooves in jam band lead guitar, to the mild detriment of everyone but stoner fratboys looking for a new Marley. Likewise, on songs like “Hindou,” El Guincho quiets the perfectly unsubtle loops that made Alegranza! such a maddeningly addictive album, cushioning them in undercooked guitar leads and, of course, steel drums. Unlike Chao, though, he can’t write a strong melody once, let alone coast off a riddim over and over again, and without the blissful four notes of something like “Palamitos Park” to shout-harmonize over, “Hindou” fades away pleasantly, a quickly disappearing summer breeze. It would be a sweet epitaph to a long career, but it’s hot out, and the sun is making me wilt already. Pardon me for wanting a jam.