Edited by John Daly
Feature photo by Jerry Robinson
Mariachi El Bronx, the beloved alter-ego of punk band, The Bronx, will be releasing its first album in more than a decade and today drops the track and accompanying video, “Songbird.”
The new album, “Mariachi El Bronx IV” is a 12-track collection of sound that blends the best of The Bronx’s trademark punk with a collaborative Mexican heritage. Mariachi El Bronx consistently delivers heartfelt music that covers vast terrain in uniquely energetic style.
What started in 2008 as The Bronx’s creative experiment became Mariachi El Bronx’s unlikely headlining career – a project rooted in their deep connection to the Hispanic music and culture of their Los Angeles home.
Although seemingly different, the band doesn’t see the genres of punk and mariachi as mutually exclusive – they instead view them as spiritually entwined forces rooted in resilient storytelling. “Punk rock and mariachi music are very similar in soul,” says songwriter and lead vocalist Matt Caughthran. “It’s working class music. It’s real music.”
The new album celebrates the rich Hispanic music and culture woven into the fabric of their hometown through 12 songs that follow gamblers, aging playboys, warriors, and lovers wrestling with the complexities of contemporary life.
Today they share the final single ahead of the album’s release, “Songbird,” a track that confronts a creative hurdle many artists face: writer’s block. Frontman Caughthran was deep in a period of creative exhaustion when longtime collaborator Vincent Hidalgo – son of Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo – hit on a pulse-quickening guitar line in the studio.
Caughthran and the Hidalgo family’s musical orbit goes back decades. He first met Vincent and his brother David Jr. in high school, where the three began playing music together, laying the foundation for a creative relationship which has spanned more than 30 years.
After decades of collaboration, the spark was instant and to Caughthran, Vincent’s riff sounded like a hummingbird flapping its wings – the same bird he’d been watching outside his writing window as he stared down a blank page. The block faded instantly as lyrics poured out of his brain: “I was staring at another empty page / Feeling every single second of my age.”
The video for “Songbird” was directed by Blaise Cepis, who said: “whenever I direct a music video, I’m just trying to make something 11-year-old me would’ve stayed up late hoping to catch on 120 Minutes or Headbangers Ball. Thankfully I found eight kindred spirits in Mariachi El Bronx, who were the most incredible collaborators and were down for anything. I had such a great time with the band and the insanely talented gorgeous cast, I think 11-year-old me would approve.”
Pre-save Mariachi El Bronx IV here.
Watch the video for ‘Songbird’ here:
Tracklisting
- Forgive or Forget
- Bandoleros
- Songbird
- All Things
- El Dorado
- Fools Gold
- The Takers
- RIP Romeo
- Gambler’s Prayer
- El Borracho
- Tie You Down
- Into The Afterlife