Friday, October 07, 2005

Concrete Blonde - Mexican Moon

Mexican Moon is Concrete Blonde's fifth full-length album. Its highlights are generally regarded to be the opening two tracks, "Jenny I Read," which details the rise to stardom and subsequent fall into happy obscurity of a fashion model (rumoured to be Bettie Page), and "Mexican Moon," which finds lead singer Johnette Napolitano fleeing a failed romance into México. In accordance with the band's musical stylings on their previous album, the music on Mexican Moon is jagged and brooding, taking the gothic rock of their previous albums and adding more of a hard rock edge to it. Napolitano provided the vocals, bass guitar, samples, and the album artwork, and she was accompanied by drummer Paul Thompson and guitarist James Mankey.

The song "Jonestown" is a scathing critique of the theology surrounding the Jonestown Massacre and opens with a minute-long sample of Jim Jones ranting about warfare. "End of the Line" is a cover song, having been originally recorded by Brian Ferry. The closing track, "Bajo la Lune Mexicana," is something of a travesty. Napolitano, who does not speak Spanish, wrote the Spanish lyrics, which are a literal translation of the lyrics to the album's title track. However, none of the verbs are conjugated, noun gender is ignored, and correct grammar is non-existent. It was as if Napolitano simply ran the lyrics to "Mexican Moon" through an English-Spanish dictionary one word at a time and then sung them that way. Fans usually ignore the track, and Spanish speakers find it laughable.

Though the first two songs are fan favourites, neither were included on The Essential, a Concrete Blonde "greatest hits" retrospective which was released in 2005. This album produced three singles: the title track, "Heal It Up," and "Jonestown," which was released only on vinyl and contained an alternate version of the song.

Concrete Blonde Official Website

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