Café Tacuba – Those Mexican Rockers Who Defy Expectations

For a while, during the mid-1990s, the Mexican rock band Café Tacuba looked as if it was heading toward a careful balance of past-meets-future, mixing up Mexican folk and bolero roots with progressive, futuristic, pan-national ideas about rock or electronic music. But even that balance ended up as a limitation; it seems the band would rather work without any expectations at all.

Café Tacuba’s new record, “Sino” (Universal Latino), sounds more like classic-rock radio, as did the band’s show at the Hammerstein Ballroom on Tuesday night. And the band’s lyrics, paradoxically, are leaning toward a punk’s general suspicion of categories. “You define rock or electronica, reggaetón or hip-hop, on what the radio imposes,” the band’s short, animated singer Rubén Albarrán sneered in the new song “De Acuerdo.” “Let’s agree to disagree.” And on “El Outsider” he took the position of living outside of the system: of laws, doctors, the media.”*

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