The Mix
by Rhapsody Editorial
Top 10 Latin Alt Albums, Summer 2012
By Rachel Devitt
July 18, 2012
Latin music is all too often reduced to dance-pop, tropical
and regional Mexican styles only. Meanwhile, mainstream indie rock (what? it’s
a thing) is dominated by English-speakers. And what gets left out of those
equations? Well, just about every band on this list, for starters. Once the
provenance of post-grunge stadium rockers, Latin alt or indie today is a wealth
of fascinating scenes and sounds.
Don’t take our word for it: Check out the awesome Latin indie culture site Remezcla,
where you’ll also find lots of great recaps and video footage from this past
week’s Latin Alternative Music Conference, the annual showcase of awesome Latin
indie-pop, rock, electronic music and hip-hop. You’ll find quite a few LAMC
participants and performers on our roundup of some of this year’s top Latin alt
albums so far (such as the woman behind #1, Xenia Rubinos!), plus a bunch more chunky
dance beats, alt-folklorico, vintage psychedelic cuts, killer indie rock
and shimmering electro-pop. Dive in!
6. Jotdog
With a fantastic name (say it like the food), a fabulous album title and a
deliciously campy cover to match, one might expect this Mexican outfit to be
kind of zany. But their second album delivers pretty straight-up (and quite
pretty) electro-pop. Gauzy beats, shimmering synths and Maria Barracuda’s sexy
ice queen vocals make every track sound like a soundtrack for beautiful
people’s lives. But it’s also fun when the duo takes off in weirder directions,
like the hints of spaghetti Western on “Corazon de Metal” or the
creepy land of forgotten hip-hop toys that is “Ya Se Murio.”
http://www.rhapsody.com/#album/Alb.52621524