The Daily Spin, April 16
Los Lobos | Kiko
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite song from each album right here.
If you want to suggest an album, good news! You can do so right here!
Album: Kiko (1992)
Artist: Los Lobos
Link:
I’m pretty sure it was this album sat on the floor of my dad’s Ford Windstar for - I think - the entire time he had it. I didn’t wind up getting that deep into music until after that car had been sold and the days of riding in that black van where the airflow was the exact temperature of the outside, summer baseball tournaments and winter basketball jamborees and mornings at the bakery to a soundtrack of this and other classics.
This was not, by a longshot, Los Lobos’ most popular album, but this is the one that I will always associate with them, and though I don’t hold too many memories of hearing this anymore, there are a couple tracks that distinctly come to mind when I think back.
It’s the group’s comfort with a variety of genres - clearly they’re at their best in folk country, with hints of rock that peek through in songs like ‘Peace’, but they shine when they take it slow, as they do with ‘Just A Man’.
It’s nothing spectacular, but it gets the job done and does it well. I couldn’t ask for anything else.
Rating: 7.2/10
Best Tracks: Just A Man; Saint Behind the Glass; Peace
Worst Tracks: Whiskey Trail