Café Tacuba's latest album Cuatro Caminos made the Critics' Top Ten Albums of 2003 in Rolling Stone. Add to that the group's exposure on the soundtracks for Amores Perrosand Y Tu Mamá También, six nominations for the 2004 Latin Grammys, and they are about as big as anyone in Latin rock. Their fame doesn't seem to penetrate beyond the Spanish-speaking market though, and that's a shame.

at the heart of the set was a stripped-down, charged-up ska/rock sound which had half the crowd pogo-ing the other half into a pulp

In a telling moment, lead singer Rubén Albarrán saluted in turn each of the nationalities present in the hall, a roll-call of South and Central American countries answered enthusiastically by the public, and then asked: "what really intrigues me is –- are there any English people here?" There was a respectable response, but from where I was sitting we looked pretty thin on the ground. At times the evening felt like a nationalist rally, with flags waving around the house, and the band’s entrance greeted by chants of "México, México!" One of the biggest cheers of the night came twenty minutes before the musicians arrived, for a short, bald, bespectacled, middle-aged man, who took a bow before the clamorous crowd and was even called back for a second one. He turned out to be the Mexican consul.

Patriotism aside, it was an impressive, uncompromising set with the sharp edges sharpened. Fans of Café Tacuba's early work might been left a little breathless by the sheer visceral energy of the performance, even allowing for the usual live concert factor. But there were crowd-pleasing favourites from some of the older albums (Esa noche, Las flores) as well as one or two more contemplative moments from Cuatro Caminos (Mediodía, Eres). Violinist/tres player Alejandro Flores joined the group for a couple of numbers which drew on Mexican roots styles (with members of the group exchanging guitar and bass guitar for tres and double bass), including Juan Luís Guerra's Ojalá que llueva café, a golden oldie which for mysterious reasons inspired a lot of crowd-surfing. Generally though, Café Tacuba's traditional roots stayed, well, under the ground for most of the night. The funk influence which has characterised some of their work (though more in the lazy transmission of critics' comments than in practice) was also largely absent.

What remained at the heart of the set was a stripped-down, charged-up ska/rock sound which had half the crowd pogo-ing the other half into a pulp, following the cue of Albarrán's exuberant on-stage acrobatics. The highlight of the set was an uptempo ska rendition of Ingrata, which summed up in many ways the band's current merits –- a sense of both theatre and play in a hard-driven rock idiom which, although performed with absolute commitment and real intelligence, somehow never takes itself too seriously. Café Tacuba also performed a couple of the covers of Chilean group Los Tres which they have made their own (Tírate and Déjate caer), whose longer-faced aesthetic only threw Café Tacuba's own lighter touch into relief –- especially in the latter number for which Albarrán donned a chicken mask, and the band laid aside their instruments at one point to do a weird parody of a choreographed boy-band routine.

For more about the group, check out Café Tacuba's website, and for some different points of view from the fan base on their current direction and style, check out the customer reviews for Cuatro Caminos at Amazon. This is a band that deserves to be much better known outside the Latin market.

--Image courtesy of Sarah Shorter--