Viva Tirado

For an album that doesn’t initially appear to be much deeper than your typical no-frills all-covers soul-jazz set, the first LP by L.A. combo El Chicano still feels like a rarity: outwardly an effort to cover enough showband ground to draw in some theoretical, inexplicable Les Baxter/Herbie Hancock/Beatles crossover general audience, but singular enough in their own distinctive sound to make it all work on Latin soul’s terms. Maybe it’s because they knew the rules everyone else was playing by and they found those parameters boring; ergo their pulling off the absurd but effective stunt of compressing everything good about “Light My Fire” into a span of 25 seconds. Yet Viva Tirado transcends the facile surface-level “but how do they measure up to Santana” pigeonholing in more important ways: guitarist Little Mickey Lespron and organist Bobby Espinoza take melodic-solo spotlights over steady, unflashy percussion, crafting a nightclub-friendly yet deep-grooved set that bypasses hard-psych flourishes for more nuanced, simpler pleasures — think a reggie toke and a Modelo as opposed to the ayahuasca journeys evoked by some of their upstate peers. Opener “Cantaloupe Island” and the well-loved title cut prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that “mellow intensity” isn’t an oxymoron, closer “Coming Home Baby” is a fantastic exemplar of how a savvy shift in rhythmic emphasis can turn a simple blues-based jazz standard into a whole different kind of liveliness, and they wind up finding angles on “Eleanor Rigby” and the Little Anthony & the Imperials-popularized “Hurt So Bad” that add some surprisingly simpatico punchiness and even a bit of levity to the original versions’ longing.