Predictability isn't necessarily a negative thing in regional Mexican music; there are plenty of veteran mariachi, banda, and norteño artists who don't offer a lot of surprises when they enter a recording studio but can usually be counted on to provide consistent, solid, predictably enjoyable albums. But
Yolanda Pérez has been one of regional Mexican music's chameleons; the banda singer has tried different things on different releases (much like
Prince or
David Bowie), and one never knows what she will do from one album to the next.
Pérez' fifth album,
Todo de Mi (All of Me), it turns out, is one of her more conservative efforts -- certainly compared to
Aquí Me Tienes or
Esto Es Amor -- although not conservative in the way that her fourth album,
Te Sigo Amando, was conservative. While
Te Sigo Amando favored banda arrangements of familiar Latin pop hits and had an adult contemporary-ish outlook,
Todo de Mi emphasizes
Pérez's ranchera side in a big way. That isn't to say that
Todo de Mi is devoid of Latin pop appeal, but ranchera is the 38-minute CD's highest priority -- and ranchera is certainly the main ingredient on pleasing tracks like "Ya Es Muy Tarde," "Duele," and "El Chisme." It doesn't get any more ranchera than "Cariño Prohibido," which is one of those melancholy gems that really underscores the parallels between Mexican music and country; the song is about drinking yourself into oblivion in order to cope with heartbreak (a subject that
Merle Haggard,
Dwight Yoakam, the seminal
Hank Williams, Sr., and so many other honky tonk icons have tackled). Those who savored the risk-taking eclecticism of
Aquí Me Tienes and
Esto Es Amor might lament the fact that
Pérez isn't combining banda with reggae, funk, or hip-hop this time, but from a ranchera perspective,
Todo de Mi clearly has a lot going for it. ~ Alex Henderson