Gotan Project: Lunático (XL)

The long-awaited second album by the Paris-based tango-loving trio of Phillippe Cohen Solal, Christoph Müller and Eduardo Makaroff will undoubtedly appear in the electronica section of record stores. But it could just as easily find a home filed under world music, since it’s a far cry from much of the generic Latin techno out there. In fact, Lunático’s embrace of more traditional song structures (individual lyric and acoustic instruments credits appear, and how rare is that in electronica?) is not unlike that of Bebel Gilberto, who abandoned the beats-driven Tanto Tempo for the samba and bossa nova of her second disc.

This “conservative” about-face bears fruit for Gotan Project on slow-burning numbers like “Amor Porteño” (on which Calexico offers able backing) and “Celos,” both sung by Cristina Vilallonga and both owing a debt to French chanson. These tracks and others display a languid sensuality whose only recent practitioner in the English-speaking world is Brazilian Girls.

Obviously, the bandonion (the wheezy accordion at the heart of Argentinean music) makes its presence felt throughout the album, but its ubiquity doesn’t squelch the variety of styles on display, from hip-hop (“Mi Confesión, featuring a guest rap from duo Apolo Novax) to spoken word over disco strings (“Notas”), to bass-heavy Afro-beat (“Domingo”) to atmospheric soundtrack covers (Ry Cooder’s “Paris Texas”).

Whereas much of the band’s debut La Revancha del Tango seemed a bit like a genre-hopping mash-up, simply wedding electronic beats to snatches of accordion, Lunático seems conceived as all of a piece. And if nothing here reaches the heights of the first album’s crazed, violin-damaged “Tríptico,” neither is there anything as egregious as Revancha’s pointless take on Gato Barbieri’s “Last Tango in Paris.” In short, an album for the ear as well as the feet. (www.gotanproject.com)

7 Blips out of 10 By Matthew Christoffersen