Los Cenzontles: Regeneration

“[T]here’s always tension between the old and the new,” says this band’s central figure, a third-generation Mexican-American named Eugene Rodriguez, “and we were playing with that tension on Regeneration.” But the tension is all happening conceptually and offstage and the album itself mixes Mexican traditional with straight American rock and country and a Burt Bacharach cover in ways that are probably not going to make anyone feel the sting of ideas being stretched or attacked or fundamentally changed.

The notion of cultural mixing might make the listener tense, considering the arguments surrounding Mexican migration into the States, and they might feel peeved when the singer on “No Politics” tells them to shush about their politics and talk to him about birds and trees instead, the crafty ostrich and the noble pine. But the music is as outgoing and earnest as a Disney sidekick. “I want to be free to be me,” it sings.