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New York Observer
March 26, 2001
Manhattan Music

Los Super Seven: Bueno Disco Social Club

Two years ago, Los Super Seven won a Grammy (for Best Mexican-American Music Performance, but a Grammy all the same). The band's debut album -- a magnificent, roiling mixture of Tejano standards, squeezebox numbers and country tunes -- was one of the best discs of 1998, on a par with Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and Willie Nelson's Teatro. The album even sold well compared to the sales of core members David Hidalgo's and Cesar Rosas' other band, Los Lobos.

This time around, Messrs. Hidalgo and Rosas give the distinct impression that they want to do better than fine. Spurred, perhaps, by the breakout success of The Buena Vista Social Club, Los Super Seven's second album, Canto (Columbia/Legacy), moves away from the Mexican and country-tinged arrangements of their eponymous debut and into a more full-throated, and varied, celebration of Latin music. As a result, Messrs. Hidalgo and Rosas have changed the lineup of their side project. Tex-Mex rocker Joe Ely and crooner Freddie Fender are out; Mavericks lead singer Raul Malo, Peruvian chanteuse Susana Baca and Brazilian star Caetano Veloso are in, along with some other returning members.

The languid brushed percussion of the opening track telegraphs Canto's bold intentions from the get-go. Before any more instruments join in, Mr. Malo, who possesses a sulfurously rich voice, murmurs one word and carries it for seven beats: "Siboney." Yanquis will be excused for not recognizing the significance contained in this word. The transcendent singer Xiomara Alfaro, a Cuban Ella Fitzgerald, all but trademarked Ernesta Lecuona's "Siboney" 40 years ago; her rendition of this torch classic has the same weight and resonance as Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" or Frank Sinatra's "My Way." But Los Super Seven own the song here, with Mr. Malo's deliciously pained vocals murmuring above that lonely percussion, a plodding bass line and mournful piano chords.

Like "Siboney," eight more of the 12 songs on Canto are Latino classics with either Cuban, Colombian or Brazilian pedigrees. (Messrs. Hidalgo and Rosas are the authors of the album's three originals, and Mr. Hidalgo's "Teresa," Canto's only English-language song, has already been released as a single.) But Los Super Seven manage to put their own stamp on each of the songs, usually by avoiding the ramped-up, hyperkinetic pace of much Latin music.

Canto takes its time, and as a result it's an excellent album for newcomers to Latin music (especially those who somehow missed the whole Buena Vista craze.) After all, it's easier to be introduced to jazz through Miles Davis' Kind of Blue than Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come. But just as Kind of Blue is one of the best jazz albums ever made, Canto will go down as a durable document of Latin, and American, music.