Review: Café Tacvba — Jei Beibi
Jei Beibi, Café’s latest record is a collection of songs that neither sound original nor entertaining to the average listener that’s not a hard-core fan. Los Tacvbos have been repeating themselves for some years now creating the same pop-rock ballads since Cuatro Caminos, the record where Café first presented their current sound that granted the critic’s approval, despite hints that their sound was evolving something more interesting.
Jei Beibi is a bitter disappointment lyrically, musically, and stylistically. On the record, Café present a somber view of their world in a cheap, corny way. There’s no artistic exploration in the way Los Tacvbos express their suffering through music. And whatever penurious situation they were in, it seems it was self-inflicted: drugs, love affairs, and the ever-present anxiety of death.
The song el mundo en que nací is a predictable, cliché song filled with easy-to-write verses and a subpar, bleak and forced, vocal delivery. Los Tacvbos try, unsuccessfully, to submerge the listener in a lullaby-like song that wants to paint the (allegedly!) gloomy state of the world. But at the same time, it is a multifaceted song where Emanuel expresses gratitude to his parents, excuses himself of all the future harm he may cause to his child, and finds a justification to be a passive observer in this world. No matter the song’s good intention, that’s a song that should not make the cut on any record released by a major band, let alone Café Tacvba’s.
Los Tacvbos seem to be conscious of their own decline in artistic quality. In several songs, they express the frustration of having exhausted the set of possible songs hidden in the superset of all possible melodies and the anxiety of never being able to escape their artistic personas. Los Tacvbos express the need to be in harmony with themselves and the need to run away from their fame. It turns out, they are tired of living a lie. It turns out, the image of rebellious chaps was a façade. It turns out, they just want a peasant life. Café is either going trough a quite difficult moment of confusion and stress, or they are just betraying their former selves by negating their past life.
But there’s one song which demonstrates that Café Tacvba as a band doesn’t give a fuck anymore. Me gusta tu manera is a reggae/rap mix that can easily be Café’s worst attempt to put together a song. The lyrics are a repetitive, meaningless mantra declaring that me gusta tu manera de besar the way a horny teenager would do. This song is a half-baked attempt to evolve Café’s sound into the direction of the likes of Sonido Gallo Negro or Dengue Dengue Dengue.
Café Tacvba is not offering anything new and whatever advancement they tried to make on their sound, they failed to bring it to fruition.
