Cafe Tacuba’s Vast Range Challenges and Delights

Mexican quartet Cafe Tacuba’s latest album is a two-disc affair that arguably is the most ambitious and aesthetically accomplished work in rock en espan~ol.

Before an adoring audience Saturday at the Sun Theatre in Anaheim, the band presented this material in a stunning set that challenged and rewarded listeners.

Through an array of guitars, basses, drum machines, keyboard effects and singer Ruben Albarran’s barking voice, the group has access to a vast palette of sounds, which it used wisely to create a variety of moods during a two-hour performance that alternated between deep-rooted intensity and moments of remarkable levity.

Tacuba offered a healthy selection of old favorites, including a series of wacky cover songs that it recorded in 1996 and cemented its reputation for playful experimentation. But the show’s most intense moments grew out of the way the band reproduced so well the kaleidoscopic textures of the new album.

Titled “Reves/Yosoy,” the CD includes one disc of dissonant, instrumentals, and a second disc of songs whose tender sounds evoke feelings of lightness and longing.

Live, the instrumentals sounded like the fever-induced nightmares of an adventurous college student who has spent a day listening to Kraftwerk, Robert Fripp and Stockhausen. The audience responded strongly to a 20-minute passage of electronic distortion and drum machine rage that seemed to belong at a drum and bass club instead of a rock concert.

The new songs, on the other hand, offer exquisite melodies in a more conventional context, and at this point, stand as Tacuba’s crowning achievement.

The wonderfully quirky “El Hombre Impassible” with its catchy chorus (“I am the impossible / impassible man”), has a late-’60s Beatles feel, while “La Muerte Chiquita” is an elegant waltz mirroring Latin America’s morbid preoccupation with sex and death. The lyrical “El Rio” demonstrates that although Tacuba came of age in the aftermath of punk and electronica, its connection to Latin American folklore is a vivifying force that keeps reappearing when you least expect it.

As with Argentina’s Fabulosos Cadillacs and Colombia’s Aterciopelados, the other two heavyweights in rock en espan~ol, the group explores cutting-edge musical technology from the Anglo side, while keeping a foot firmly planted on the traditions that make Latin music such a soulful affair.

At this point, Cafe Tacuba is more than a mere rock en espan~ol act. It belongs alongside every other innovative artist who’s making a difference in the wider world of pop music.

Cafe Tacuba plays tonight at the House of Blues, 8430 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, 7:30 p.m. $25. (323) 848-5100.