Maneja Beto: Accidentes de Longitud y Latitud

Accidentes de Longitud y Latitud is a frustrating album. The first minute or so is extraordinary — imagine flamenco clapping performed by a steel pan band — but then the song forgets itself and begins to wander loosely in different directions, never getting anywhere. You want to shake it and shout, “Focus! Focus! Come on, you were doing so well! Please!” Maneja Beto do this repeatedly: they seem to be charging toward brilliance, and then they pull back. Perhaps they had a flood of ideas and were democratically reluctant to leave any of them out. Perhaps they couldn’t think of a way to develop the great ideas once they had set them up. “Where do we go with ear-battering flamenco?” “I’m not sure; let’s try something else.” The album is also indulgently long. I wrote ‘self-indulgent’ but then changed it, because I realised that they were indulging me as well, the greedy listener who wants more and more and more for her money. Starve me a little, boys! Trimmed and sharpened, Accidentes de Longitud y Latitud could have been fabulous.