{"id":9320,"date":"2009-03-29T18:00:32","date_gmt":"2009-03-29T18:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=9320"},"modified":"2015-10-23T18:01:35","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T18:01:35","slug":"album-review-los-lobos-wolf-tracks-the-best-of-los-lobos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2009\/03\/29\/album-review-los-lobos-wolf-tracks-the-best-of-los-lobos\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Los Lobos – Wolf Tracks: The Best of Los Lobos"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"los_lobos\"<\/p>\n

Reviewing best-ofs is a dodgy proposition; if the artist in question is good, then by definition the disc is good…generally. It’s simple enough to point out a shoddy compilation, taking issue with any number of issues (song selection, poor remastering, lack of bonus\/rarities, clumsy sequencing, lousy packaging, etc.). With all that in mind, then, how does Wolf Tracks: The Best of Los Lobos<\/i> — the third retrospective of the quarter-century recorded career of Los Lobos — measure up?<\/p>\n

The first attempt to survey these Angelinos’ recorded oeurve was 1993’s Just Another Band from East L.A.<\/i> A full eleven of 20 cuts on Wolf Tracks<\/i> are repeated from the East L.A.<\/i> set. More recently (2000) Rhino\/Warners dropped El Cancionero: Mas y Mas<\/i>, a sprawling box set. There’s plenty of redundancy with regard to that package, too. Anyone owning either of the two previous comps, then, would have little use for Wolf Tracks<\/i>, as it offers up only a single unreleased track.<\/p>\n

Of course those people are not the intended market for this new collection. Wolf Tracks<\/i> is designed as a single-disc introduction\/overview of this influential, eclectic group. On that level it succeeds. The various stages of the group’s development are well-represented in the space of eighty minutes. And unlike many groups’ retrospectives, the music quality doesn’t drop off a cliff 45 minutes into the listen. As expected, Wolf Tracks<\/i> is full of energy. It’s a party disc that encourages living-room dancing, yet bears up to close, careful, attentive, thoughtful listening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewing best-ofs is a dodgy proposition; if the artist in question is good, then by definition the disc is good…generally. It’s simple enough to point out a shoddy compilation, taking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,19,62,65],"tags":[1343],"class_list":["post-9320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americana","category-compilation","category-rawk","category-review","tag-los-lobos","cat-6-id","cat-19-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9320","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=9320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9321,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9320\/revisions\/9321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}