Rock without borders

When the members of Mexico City’s Cafe Tacuba took the stage at the recent Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the band couldn’t have asked for a better setting. The desert sun was on its way down behind the mountains, and a cool breeze was creeping through the palm trees. As they picked up their electric guitars and settled in behind their keyboard stands, the sprawling expanse of polo field in front of them teemed with thousands of festival-goers.

Cafe Tacuba was one of two Mexican acts to make the Coachella bill (Kinky, from Monterrey, played the day before) alongside marquee faves like the White Stripes, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the Beastie Boys, and they brought the festival’s sizable Latino contingent front and center. The foursome blazed through some of their early hits (the rockero anthem “Chica Banda,” the angular disco of “El Baile y El Salon”), but the highlight was the debut of “Que Pasara,” a thundering, muscular whine from the band’s highly anticipated new album, “Cuatro Caminos” (due July 1).

Produced by Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips), Andrew Weiss (Ween) and the band’s longtime producer, Gustavo Santaolalla, it is the band’s first full-length album of original material in more than three years. “I’m gonna speak in Spanish because there are so many of my paisanos here,” the band’s charming and scrappy lead singer, Ruben Albarran, told the crowd in Spanish with a giddy smile. “But if you see anyone around you who speaks Anglo-Saxon, please translate for us.”

For this slice of the crowd -- full of as many veteran Tacuba fans as newcomers who had wandered over from the food tents and never left -- no translation was needed. This was joyous, experimental rock in any language. As Sonic Youth blasted feedback from the main stage, Tacuba went one better, cranking up its amps to blast a head-banging son jarocho version of Juan Luis Guerra’s “Ojala Que Llueva Cafe” with punkish ranchera howls and ferocious fiddling that churned the front of the crowd into a playful mosh pit.

In five albums, Albarran, Emmanuel “Meme” del Real, and Quique and Joselo Rangel -- all in their mid-30s -- have crafted a complex and style-swapping rock sound that, while rooted in the daily hustle and manic cultural collisions of Mexico City life, has always flown above its traffic jams and plazas into a worldly sky with no national limits. As its Coachella set showed, Tacuba’s vision of rock can seamlessly encompass everything from polka and classical to mariachi, techno, speed metal and ska.

Over the years, the four have been just as at ease backing Beck on a Spanish-language makeover of “Jackass” (they toured with him in 2000) as they’ve been collaborating with classical music outlaws Kronos Quartet (they wrote “12/12” for Kronos’ recent gallop across Mexican music, “Nuevo”).

“I have never been so impressed with how well a group of musicians and composers work together as a band,” says Kronos’ David Harrington. (Kronos covered Tacuba’s “La Muerte Chiquita” on 2000’s “Caravan.”) “They each have such an incredible creativity, really sensitive and open. No idea is too extreme for them, nothing is too far-reaching.”

Tacuba’s commitment to artistic growth is precisely what caught the attention of executives at the band’s new label, MCA, which wants “Cuatro Caminos” (Four Roads) to reach the international audiences they believe it deserves. Although the band’s previous label, with Warner Music, signed it to separate deals in the U.S. and Mexico, MCA made the new deal worldwide, removing some of the national market and industry barriers that have helped stymie Latin alternative artists in the past. The label also launched an aggressive rollout to Latin and Anglo insiders last month with advance press mailings and listening parties, making sure the band’s music would find its way into as many of the right hands as possible.

“For bands that are great, there is always a battle between art and commerce, and this band has one foot firmly planted on each side of that battle,” says Joel Mark, MCA vice president of A&R.; “They’re making great art and they actually sell records all over the world. It’s gonna be a huge worldwide push for this record. This country, in particular, is ready for a Spanish-speaking rock band to break though in a big way.”

Back to basics

Like a musical amoeba determined to never be locked into a single shape, Cafe Tacuba has always been a band tethered to change. When Warner Mexico released their debut in 1992, the four former graphic-design students donned sideburns and huarache sandals and came on like satirical ranchera punks.

Weaned on equal parts the Beatles, Nine Inch Nails and Mexican songstress Chavela Vargas, they sounded like no other band on the Mexico City rock scene. While Del Real went high-tech on drum machines and melodicas, the Rangels watered their family’s acoustic roots in Veracruz, strumming a jarana guitar and plucking an upright bass. On songs like “Maria” and “Las Persianas,” Tacuba goofed on Mexican traditions while throwing them into the mosh pit, blending Mexico’s indigenous pasts with its electronic futures.

Everything the debut hinted at came true on the landmark follow-up, 1994’s “Re.” A dizzying kaleidoscope of stylistic explosions, “Re” started with Indian chants and Morse codes, then went anywhere it wanted to, from punk to banda to bolero, without losing its focus.

The band had found the world -- from the most pop to the most avant-garde -- without leaving home. “Re” created a “very dynamic and open blueprint that for the rest of their career will let them do whatever they want to do,” said Santaolalla, who discovered the band playing a book fair on the outskirts of Mexico City. “They can do a mariachi album tomorrow. They can do an abstract, concrete music album the next day. Now they can do anything they want.”

With “Cuatro Caminos,” the band’s next step forward is a move back to the rock ‘n’ roll basics it never fully embraced. After more than a decade of playing acoustic guitars and contrabajo, the Rangels are going electric. And most monumental of all, Tacuba temporarily retires its signature instrument, the drum machine, and hooks up with two of the most in-demand drummers on the U.S. alterna-rock scene: Victor Indrizzo (Beck, Macy Gray, Chris Cornell) and Joey Waronker (Beck, R.E.M., Smashing Pumpkins).

“Playing with live drummers feels so liberating,” Albarran confessed last fall when the band was back in town for a mixing session at the Echo Park studio of Santaolalla and co-producer Anibal Kerpel. “We’re all relearning how to play, and it’s been making us really happy as musicians.”

The relearning process started last year when Cafe Tacuba came to L.A. to begin rehearsing and recording the material for “Cuatro Caminos.” It was the musicians’ first time composing original material together in almost three years. After the commercial struggle of their 1999 double-album “Reves/YoSoy” (Disc 1 was all-instrumental with only numbers for song titles; disc 2 had tripped-out songs about space and fruit trees), the band took a hiatus to explore side projects. Joselo released his solo album, “Oso”; Albarran launched a post-rock unit, Villa Jardin.

“The lack of sales with ‘Reves/YoSoy’ affected us greatly, but not in a negative way,” recalled Albarran, who changes his stage name with each album (he’s been Cosme, Anonimo, Rita Cantalagua and, after putting last year’s Gallo Gasss-masked rooster persona to rest, now goes by Elfego Buendia). “We needed that album to get where we are now. ‘Reves’ was very sophisticated, complex, in some way dark and introspective. We needed to make that album so that we could make this one, which is simple, direct, spontaneous and full of light.”

It started with jamming

“Cuatro Caminos’ ” first group songwriting session last year set the tone for the free, improvisational spirit that ended up saturating the whole album: The musicians started jamming, and within minutes, they had a new song. “As soon as we got back together and played as a group, we all realized just how valuable our little rest was,” said a beaming Quique Rangel, sporting a Fred Perry tennis shirt as the band paused for a conversation during their November sessions.

“We just started playing and Ruben took out his notebook full of lyrics, and suddenly, out of nowhere, we found ourselves with a new song. We were like, ‘Ahh, very nice, very nice!’ So now we’re thinking we should take another vacation next month!”

Many “Cuatro Caminos” tracks were written the same way, as loose jams that evolved organically into finished compositions. The rest followed the band’s usual process, with each bringing individual songs to the table and then working them out in a series of rehearsals -- first in Mexico City, then in North Hollywood, before heading over to Capitol to record nine songs in four days.

“In a group, you have to negotiate and make compromises,” added Albarran, in his black T-shirt, black jeans and black pompadour that has since grown out into a kinky nest of curls. “That’s how the music gets richer. It’s what makes the songs better. When you’re alone, you just do things your way with nobody to question it. It’s more selfish.”

Last year, to get warmed up for “Cuatro Caminos,” Tacuba released the EP “Vale Callampa” (its official MCA debut), four covers of songs by the now-defunct Chilean alternative band Los Tres -- a band still obscure here in the States, but one that was widely popular in South America in the ‘90s.

“Going to Chile and getting to know the culture was special for us as a band, and the music of Los Tres was central to that experience,” Albarran said. “We’ve played shows with them and they’ve become friends. Our album is about our respect for them and our sadness that they are no longer playing together.”

But it’s the sophisticated, all-original compositions on “Cuatro Caminos” that best demonstrate how a band from the Mexico City suburbs could end up sandwiched on a Coachella schedule between Tortoise and Primal Scream.

Although nervous about playing beside two of their favorite bands at the U.S.’s biggest music festival, the Tacuba musicians insist that when it comes to making records, their new “worldwide” status doesn’t faze them. They remain the band we see in the video for “Dejate Caer” -- musicians who wear white shirts tucked into white slacks as they do choreographed line dances on the side of a Mexico City freeway, a band that can play air-guitar on a scaffold high above the chaotic metropolis that gave birth to it.

“When we started, we were very focused on giving voice to our city,” said Albarran. “But with the passing of time, we had the chance to know other countries and other music, and now we are not as focused as we once were on speaking only about what happens in our city. We want to be able to look outside and then look back inside with new vision. But in the end, we continue being who are, products of Mexico City.”

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The Cafe menu: Tacuba’s best

Style-swapping and ever-evolving, Cafe Tacuba’s sound reflects the complex cultural collisions they’ve found and fostered in their native Mexico City and beyond. Below, a taste of their trajectory.

Cafe Tacuba (1992): A fresh and clever break from the Mexican rock that came before it, Tacuba’s first offering helped start the Mexican alt-rock revolution of the early ‘90s. Wielding a drum machine and plenty of suburban irreverence, it debuted a plucky sound that merged Mexican roots with sprightly ska and preppy punk.

Re (1994): A masterpiece of Latin American rock and one of the most important albums of the ‘90s (in any language). A sweeping, kinetic exercise in musical shape-shifting, “Re” leapfrogs among eras and styles. Tacuba mashes up punk and mariachi, disco and bolero while singing about petroleum, UFOs, the Mexico City metro and the beauty of two men falling in love on the dance floor.

Avalancha de Exitos (1996): An album of covers that proved Tacuba could transform whatever it touched. Save for a traditional Veracruz makeover of Dominican merengue singer Juan Luis Guerra’s hit “Ojala Que Llueva Cafe,” the repertoire was mostly Mexican. The four took on everything from old (Alberto Dominguez’s classic bolero “Perfidia”) to new (the campy ‘80s new wave of Botellita de Jerez’s “Alarmala de Tos”) and made it their own.

Reves/YoSoy (1999): Artful and wildly progressive, this double-disc set chose the sonic outer limits over commercial accessibility. The stomp of traditional Mexican dancers faded into electronica clicks. Trip-hop melted into son jarocho. Psychedelic piano ballads disintegrated into noise. A post-rock album that ended up post-everything.

-- Josh Kun