The title of the fifth long-player from these Swiss-Ecuadorian brothers translates as "the good and the bad." There is no ugly, though the inspiration
Hermanos Gutiérrez drew from
Ennio Morricone's theme to Sergio Leone's epic spaghetti Western is obvious. This date follows 2020's widely acclaimed
Hijos de Sol. Recorded in Nashville at producer
Dan Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound studio, it appears on his label, distributed by Concord. For the uninitiated, the Gutiérrez siblings' music embodies musical and production elements that recall
Ry Cooder's soundtracks (especially Paris, Texas) and the Western scores of
Nico Fidenco,
Alessandro Alessandroni,
Luis Bacalov, and
Morricone, as well as vintage Latin American music from the 1950s and '60s. The brothers' sound reflects endless, sun-drenched skies and remote, often unforgiving, spooky landscapes. Stephan and Alejandro play a traditional electric guitar and a lap steel guitar with organic percussion. Their intimate approach involves one brother establishing a rhythmic vamp while the other entwines his melodic lines around it inextricably. For the first time, they are selectively accompanied by chamber strings, congas, and on "Tres Hermanos,"
Auerbach's guitar.
The desert-flavored title track opens the album. It was recorded surreptitiously 20 minutes after the duo's arrival in the studio for the session. While the brothers were working out the changes amid the reverbed, string-bending lyricism,
Auerbach hit "record," capturing their idiosyncratic, seamless sonic dialogue. They kept the take. "Los Chicos Tristes" emerges sounding like a Latinized version of something from early
Durutti Column. The fingerpicked chord voicings and interwoven middle and bass string fills are adorned by wispy yet insistent strings, creating a quiet, foreboding sense of drama. "Thunderbird" draws on the song forms of Mexican nueva canción and Cuban bolero. The guitar interplay is knotty yet limpid; their playing is nearly telepathic in its slippery melody and circular interaction. "Tres Hermanos" -- with
Auerbach on a third guitar -- happened because the producer helped the pair work out a particularly difficult arrangement. Two serpentine guitars create a harmonic labyrinth and a rhythm that recalls the rural Mexican cumbia. Lead fills waft in and out until the lap steel enters, creating alternate lyric lines, ringing harmonies, and pulse-like phrasing above simple percussion. While "Pueblo Man" is a gorgeous pastoral ballad, "La Verdad" weds cumbia, surf, blues, and Mexican vaquero (cowboy) music. "Los Amantes" whispers its drifting serpentine melody across a percussive, fingerpicked lower-string vamp. Percussion paces the pair, who weave in and through one another as the lap steel whines in the distance. Closer "Dorado Valley" employs a minor key. A two-chord rhythm vamp is established, altering the soundscape with shapes and overdubbed fingerpicking; the lap steel flows above, around, and through with intimate and intricate lines. It carries the set out with a lonesome, arid groove. Due to wider distribution this time, the gorgeous El Bueno y El Malo will present a greater opportunity for listeners to encounter the nomadic, atmospheric sound world of
Hermanos Gutiérrez. Don't miss it. ~ Thom Jurek