It is easy to feel a sense of musical déjà vu while listening to La Radiolina, Manu Chao’s sixth album. The French-born singer, of Spanish origin, likes to recycle riffs and hooks over the course of a record; elements of an earlier track will pop up later in the album (sometimes just once, often more frequently than that) but the surrounding musical context will have altered slightly. The riff may be played at half the speed of its earlier incarnation, or it may be placed atop a very different backing track.
An unusual device, certainly, but one which works; it lends the record a welcome sense of flow and continuity. Also, Chao is sensible enough to only repeat his most insidious riffs and melody lines.
The record consists of 21 tracks, several falling below the two-minute mark. Chao is at best when merging his Latin/salsa influences with squealing, screeching garage-rock; tracks like ’13 Dias’, ‘Tristeza Maleza’ and ‘El Kitapena’ are filled with Balearic breeziness and melody, but the cutting, needling guitar lines buried just beneath the surface give them added sharpness and potency. The sweet oddball thrash and peculiar shuffling rhythms on these standout tracks may remind some of The Pixies, but Chao’s ability to marry lush, acoustic tenderness with fizzing garage rock (in the same song) puts this listener more in mind of Arthur Lee.
When Chao sticks to one style or sound, he is good, but not spectacular. ‘Me Llaman Calle’, for instance, is a more straightforward Latin pop song, which could easily fit onto a Gypsy Kings record; pleasantly melodic, for sure, but lacking the visceral thrill of the album’s finer moments.
Chao sings in a number of languages, including French, Spanish, English and Arabic (to name just a few). From an English speaker’s perspective, he is easier to love when performing in a foreign/unfamiliar tongue, as his lyricism tends to involve rather cheesy left-wing truisms.
But these quibbles should be put aside, as Chao has demonstrated, once again, his remarkable fluency in the language of music.