los lobos - the ride

Do yourself a favour.
 Los Lobos  The Ride is the best of 2004 so far, although I've yet to get my own copy of Dr John's latest  "N'Awlinz: Dis Dat or d'Udda.

For various reasons I was listening to Los Lobos on my Koss TD70 Headphones tonight and its even more alive than listening through the Yamaha NS10's in my office. (You can buy a pair of NS10's on e-bay for usa$690 atm). Plugged into a vintage Luxman R1040 by way of a Pioneer PD 104.

Enough of the audio geeking.
This Los Lobos album gets better each listening. Usually I cringe when I see the addition of famous "guest artists" on an album. However the east angelenos pull it off with a diverse range of talent such as Elvis Costello, Mavis Staples, Bobby Womack, Tom Waits, Rueben Blades and Richard Thompson. It still sounds like a good Los Lobos album despite all these powerful voices, who matched with any other band could have stolen the show by making each song the singer's not the band's and detracting from the Los Lobos feel.