Adrian Quesada's Boleros Psicodelicos

One Liner: The guy behind Black Pumas and many other good bands playing Mexican boleros.

Wikipedia Genre: Boleros, nothing but boleros.

Home: Austin!

Poster Position: 11
Weekend One Only.  Saturday.

Thoughts:  Man, this better not be why Black Pumas just announced a hiatus the other day, because this is a fraction as good as the Pumas.  C'mon man.  Don't kill the Pumas!  Please!  

Quesada is a long-time musician guy around the Austin scene.  Attended UT.  Has played in Grupo Fantasma back in the day, and then since has been part of really cool projects such as Spanish Gold (remember them from a few years back?  With the My Morning Jacket Drummer?  I loved them at ACL and even saw their late night show), the rad Third Root rap group, Brownout (a funky Latin thing that has done cover albums of Sabbath and Public Enemy), some other bands I haven't heard of, and then Black Pumas.  Which makes him Austin music royalty, since Black Pumas and Spoon are about the best things to come out of Austin in years.

So this is a little confusing though, because there is no band called Boleros Psicodelicos, it is just he name of his most recent album.  Wikipedia says it was inspired by the Latin American psychedelic ballads of the sixties and seventies.  It sounds really good, even if I don't know jack squat about what a boleros is.  But I can look it up, and a "bolero" is a form of love song that originated in Cuba in the 19th century, which then became popular because of Mexican composers in the 1940s.  The lyrics often reflect themes of bittersweet, unrequited, betrayed, or eternal love.

So I guess he is just going to go up there and play this whole album for the audience?  Thom Yorke did something like that a few years back.  Odd.

No shock, but the first song has the most streams by a ton.  I have a feeling people are checking it out and then being like "duuurrrr, I caint understand what they saying" and then turning it off.  Which I absolutely would have done if I didn't need to listen for this blog.  That song is "Mentiras Con Carino," and it has 834k streams.

I dig the groove for sure, like even though I have no clue what she is singing about, the background funk and her voice combine in a lovely way.  I'll see if I can give you one more as well, and we'll skip to the one with the most streams that isn't the start of the disc.  "Hielo Seco" has just over 100k streams.

Money Mark is featured on that track - he's the dude that the Beastie Boys shoutout and who appeared as the keyboard guy on almost all of their albums.  Cool sounding track, got a nice funkiness to it.

This is an interesting album - cool stuff that I would otherwise never listen to - but I doubt I'd go see it played live.  Although I say that, and Saturday's lineup is for sure the weakest, so maybe I'll end up wandering over there to listen to some Spanish love songs and funky rhythms.