Buen ChicoRight To Re-Arrange [album]
“Buen
Chico are in a
hurry to be noticed.
With their feel-good,
head-banging, fun kind
of music there is a lot
to like about Right To
Re-Arrange — one of
the best Northern indie
albums around...”
THIS DETERMINED, HAVING-A-GOOD-TIME STYLE OF MUSIC announces the band by
making the statement "here we are". Buen Chico are a fast-rising
Leeds-based three-piece band who mix punk, skiffle, prog rock and indie-pop
to produce compelling melodies through-out the thirteen songs on Right To
Re-Arrange — just the right amount of heart, marrow and mind to propel
them to the forefront of the burgeoning Yorkshire scene
There are echoes of the kind of music my brother used to play back
in the Seventies when he was the drummer for local Maidstone band, Music Familiar.
That said, Buen Chico has a modern sound but has dipped into music history to
form the best of both worlds.
The publicity machine says: "…the name they have chosen pithily re-veals these
two sides of their coin plus a dash of their amiable geek-iness: Buen Chico's
is the sound of being born in the last few years of the 1980s, then growing
up in the 1990's with your eyes open; the songs are conditioned with a set of
political sensibilities that feel timely and from the gut, as opposed to the
contrived posturing of some of the world's more grandiose recording artistes.
From the anti-lethargy indie rock mantra of their debut single Giving Your
Gifts to the classic punk-indie-ska treatise of Laying Down the Law,
sarcastically des-cribing the hypocrisy of politicians: "What can we use
this chair for/if we don't kill those who've killed before?"
Previous singles Giving Your Gifts and Gold From Lead are, the
publicity machine goes on: "great ambassadors for the choppy, hurtling Buen
Chico exuberance" who were championed by the likes of Zane Lowe and Tom Robinson
and also won a BBC6 Music session with Marc Riley. "Here and in the aforementioned
Laying Down the Law and the Malkmus-esque tune-twists of Don't Lose
Yourself in Goodwill can be heard hints of the raw instinct for pop melody
that has shackled bands as diverse as The Undertones, The Las and Pavement to
long-term fame. But Buen Chico are nothing if not a band of the present, as
their growing Yorkshire following testifies, as does the eerie prescience
of Drip Drip Tick Tock, proclaiming as it does that "Water's running
through my house/I'm never gonna bail it out/I know this sounds dire/ But I
can always build one higher."
The flagship single Choosing My Religion that came out on 8 October (2007)
is a scenic tour of everything good about the band with their seemingly bottomless
well of ideas and all those clever turns of phrase — and Buen Chico have
pulled out the stops for Right To Re-Arrange.
Performing live, they have a habit of stopping you in your tracks. Morgan Tatchell-Evans
(guitar/vocals) is a frontman in the tradition
of great English frontmen — a big-haired, self-effacing tie-wearing
hero with a wonderful voice; Kirsty Dolan (bass/backing vocals)
brings a glorious drama to it all and Alan Kenworthy (drums/percussion) under-writes
it all with pithy, coruscating drum licks. Playlouder, while intro-ducing
an interview earlier this year, said: "They [Buen Chico] have the solution to
world peace".
You get the strong impression that Buen Chico not only care about
the state of the world they're living in but also care about being in
a really great band. The name Buen Chico simply means 'good bloke',
and it was originally taken from George Orwell's Spanish Civil War memoir Homage
to Catalonia.
Having picked up the momentum that has already given them an im-pressive portfolio
of support slots — including joining The Long Blondes, Kaiser Chiefs, The
Subways, iForward, Russia!, GoodShoes and The Cribs — Buen Chico are single-minded
about fulfilling their musical am-bitions. And no doubt, fulfil them they will.
• Buen Chico's CD album Right to Re-Arrange
was released on 15 October (2007).
“Buen
Chico are in a