Remember The Bronx? The Californian punksters who epitomised the sensation that is grime and grunge only fully appreciated by seething, sweating, snotty teens cooped up in a bedroom for two years too long with nothing but a guitar, a filthy fop of cropped Cobain hair and a sneering mentality against that flowing flume perpetually bursting its banks going by the name of the mainstream? Well, there's no need for mourning their demise. It's just that that hardcore tinge has eroded away. And in it's place all set for their next trick: Spanish guitars and Cuban cigars; they've opted for pastures new and transformed into a mariachi band. The Enemy this aint...Mariachi El Bronx is as wondrous a concoction as you'd expect from mellowed punks armed with horns and colloquial Spanish dictionaries as you'd envisage in your wildest dreams. It's as if Ibrahim Ferrer and his Buena Vista Social Club grew up living off street rats in the gutter of Sunset Boulevard and Ricky Martin records. In the most eloquent of ways. Blur may have put their demons to rest and cashed in on their highly lucrative history but would they have the bravado and belief to piece together a stomping, brassy Latino affair a mere four records in? About as probable as Dave Rowntree becoming Britain's next PM. Quite how Matt Caughthran's kronies pull off the swooning swoops of Quinceniera, the whimsical fanfare of Cell Mates or the swaying big top circus choral clambers of Clown Powder is unfathomable. It's undoubtedly about to divide opinions like Moses before his crashing waves but if Marmite's lasted this long on the shelves, there's a place in HMV and hardcore hearts alike for this year's most adventurous excursion.
