When a seasoned act gets around to releasing a cameo-filled album, it’s typically time for cynical critics to sharpen their carving knives.
Maybe the album is stacked with lesser talents whose commercial fortunes have exceeded the principal artist. Or the marquee guests are only tangentially related to the artist in question, but their profiles overshadow rather than enhance. Either way, too often these efforts carry a whiff of desperation, a feeling that the goal is to make up commercial ground on the guests’ backs.
In the case of Los Lobos, you can put the critical knife away. The Ride sidesteps those traps because the artists who come along for The Ride are chosen for reasons that transcend commercial cachet. It’s debatable whether Tom Waits or Ruben Blades or Mavis Staples will boost Los Lobos into the platinum stratosphere. But the criterion for getting on this guest list is a shared musical sensibility with the band. And for that reason, the players boost the record, rather than overwhelm it.
Little Willie G of Los Angeles legends Thee Midnighters sits in for a winning reconsideration of the deep-dish funk of “Is This All There Is?” (from Los Lobos’ 1987 album By The Light Of The Moon). Dave Alvin is perfectly simpatico on the yearning “Somewhere In Time”, and, on “Kitate”, Tom Waits coaxes out some of the strangest music Los Lobos has ever committed to tape. Mitchell Froom and Greg Leisz provide some fine keys and steel to David Hidalgo’s “Rita”.
Many of the recordings were done at Cesar Rosas’ home studio (including Richard Thompson’s Latino sea chantey “Wreck Of The Carlos Rey”), while others were pieced together by correspondence (Elvis Costello’s cover of “A Matter Of Time” was recorded on tour in Oslo, Norway, with the Lobos overdubbing their parts later). Yet there’s a unifying spirit to The Ride that defies the varied approach. The perfect mix of sensibilities is best exemplified when Bobby Womack sits in for a remake of “Wicked Rain” (from 1992’s Kiko) that glides into a sweetly desperate take of his classic “Across 110th Street”.
The unlikely team of The Band’s Garth Hudson and Cafe Tacuba collaborate with Los Lobos on “La Venganza De Los Pelados”, and in translation, that title could summarize the quality of The Ride: “The Triumph Of The Underdog”.
