{"id":21661,"date":"2021-09-19T05:30:40","date_gmt":"2021-09-19T09:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=21661"},"modified":"2021-09-14T10:36:17","modified_gmt":"2021-09-14T14:36:17","slug":"album-review-the-cruzados-shes-automatic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/09\/19\/album-review-the-cruzados-shes-automatic\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: The Cruzados \u2013 She’s Automatic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"When Los Angeles punk outfit The Plugz metamorphosed into The Cruzados in 1984, they altered their musical approach. The spiky punk textures showcased on the soundtrack of Repo Man<\/i> remained, but some of the edges were sanded smooth. The quality didn\u2019t diminish; they simply made music that as somewhat more accessible. Two albums \u2013 a 1985 self-titled debut and After Dark<\/i> from 1987 \u2013 were the sum total of their studio output, and while a third album was recorded, it never saw the light of day. The band endured frequent lineup changes, and by the end of the decade, the members had gone on to other pursuits.<\/p>\n

In 202 The Cruzados returned, though only one member, bassist Tony Marsico, had been in the \u201880s-er lineup; original members Marshall Rohner and Chalo Quintana both passed away in recent years, and Tito Larriva leads his own band.<\/p>\n

Marsico is joined on She\u2019s Automatic<\/i> by members of another group, Little Caesar. The record also features an impressive lineup of guests including John Doe (X), Dave Alvin (The Blasters), Melanie Vammen (The Pandoras), Los Lobos\u2019 David Hidalgo and Steve Berlin, and a half dozen others. But despite the proliferation of session player, She\u2019s Automatic<\/i> has a cohesive sound. Thing is, it\u2019s one you\u2019ve heard before \u2026 but not on Cruzados LPs.<\/p>\n

The new music doesn\u2019t really sound like the Cruzados of old, but the spirit is there. Meat-and-potatoes rock is the order of the day, with melodies that evoke thoughts of \u201860s garage rock on tunes like \u201cNine Million Tears,\u201d a distant cousin to a similarly-titled tune you might know by one \u201cquestionable\u201d artist.<\/p>\n

The Bo Diddley beat of the title track is joined by some stinging slide guitar. \u201cSon of the Blues\u201d does indeed infuse the current-day Cruzados sound with some bloozy texture. \u201cSad Sadie\u201d Is windswept Southwestern heartland midtempo rock, the kind of music Eagles wish they could make. \u201cLong Black Car\u201d is a bit derivative, built on the same chassis as ZZ Top\u2019s \u201cTush,\u201d but it\u2019s fun tune nonetheless. The melody of \u201cLet me Down,\u201d too, is one listeners will have heard countless times, but the highly-charged I-IV-V \u201cWing and a Prayer\u201d that follows it has more to offer.<\/p>\n

\u201c54 Knockouts\u201d feels like a retread of other, better-known songs, and the album closer \u201cRock That Boat\u201d takes its framework from the same source as the Doors\u2019 \u201cBreak on Through.\u201d But considered outside of context, they\u2019re both good songs, played with conviction and verve.<\/p>\n

Docked a point or two for coming up short on originality, She\u2019s Automatic<\/i> still succeeds on the merits. It rocks, and unless you\u2019re a very, very picky audio consumer, that\u2019s enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Los Angeles punk outfit The Plugz metamorphosed into The Cruzados in 1984, they altered their musical approach. The spiky punk textures showcased on the soundtrack of Repo Man remained, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21662,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,62,65],"tags":[4650],"class_list":["post-21661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","tag-cruzados","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21663,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21661\/revisions\/21663"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}