Ozomatli: Fire Away

 Throughout their fifteen-year career, Ozomatli have had plenty of musical surprises up their collective sleeve. Their template, from the beginning, has built on an energetic fusion of salsa, cumbia, rap, rock, banda, and pretty much anything else you can think of. In the last few years, over the course of the recent discs Street Signs, Don’t Mess with the Dragon, and now Fire Away, Ozo have matured and cohered in ways that their amazing self-titled debut could only hint at.

Complaints will likely be raised, as they were with the K. C. Porter-produced Dragon, that Ozomatli has somehow abandoned the core sound that made it great. While I’ll readily concede that the sound is miles from anything on the debut or its followup (Embrace the Chaos, which had the misfortune of being released on September 11, 2001), it’s safe to say that this is a stylistic evolution, rather than an instance of the band “selling out.”

Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we, with ”Are You Ready?” The song fairly bursts out of the speakers, a clatter of aggressive percussion, layered with the vocals not only of the irreplacable Asdru Sierra, but also a troupe of South African vocalists. Justin Poree’ gets turned loose on the R&B-tinged “45″, Jack Johnson drops in on “It’s Only Paper,” “Elysian Persuasion” flirts none-too-coyly with Lenny Kravitz…

…But occasionally, the momentum is brought to a screeching halt. Raul Pacheco crooning “It’s Only Time,” one of those gee-ain’t-life-on-the-road-lonely numbers that’s been part of the rock arsenal since time immemorial, is one damn good example. It’s not just because Pacheco’s voice can’t put a candle to Asdru Sierra’s, though it’s that, too; it’s moreso that even when Ozo borders on the conventional, there’s usually some twist to the sound that keeps things interesting, and that’s missing here. Likewise, the other slower number, “Love Comes Down,” lopes along at a gauzy midtempo better suited to a Daniel Lanois joint, and is especially jarring coming off the one-two punch of “Nadas Por Free” and “Malagasy Shock.” Compounding the annoyance, the disc sounds less like it was digitally mastered than as if it was recorded onto an 8-track by means of a handful of Progresso soup cans and a good length of twine… hardly what Ozomatli’s customarily warm and punchy sound deserves.

But I digress. Let’s address the disc’s other highlights. Namely, a troika of tracks (“It’s Only Paper,” “Gay Vatos in Love,” and the stomping “Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah”) that have the sound of the punchier bits of Los Lobos. In fact, the wiseass in me would love to say that Ozomatli just made one of Los Lobos’ better albums.

And you know what? I’ll let that stand. Because like that other Band from East L.A., Ozomatli sounds at this point exactly like what they are: a band that’s got plenty to show but doesn’t have to prove to anybody but themselves. Fire Away is the sound of a crew that just doesn’t care, but in the best damn way possible. While this isn’t the best work Ozomatli has done by a long shot, it represents an interesting change in direction, not least because it signals a band that’s willing to ditch what its fans might think it “ought” to be in place of becoming what it is. And if it’s not your particular taste, don’t sweat it; if they follow true to form, it’s safe to say that the next album, like each that’s preceded it, won’t sound anything like what came before.

Postscript: Ozomatli at the Fillmore East, March 20, 2009