Moon & Stars

Album review

Americana eclecticism personified, The Mavericks influences include Tex-Mex, Cuban, and Cajun music as well as blues romps, Roy Orbison ballads, and big, splashy Latin-flavored pop showstoppers. The passion and precision that this hard-touring foursome put into every performance, sparked by the voice and marvelously consistent songwriting of leader Raul Malo keeps things compelling and new on their first English language album since 2017.  Malo is one of the finest vocalists in popular music today, a force of nature with every breath.

After several breakups and reunions beginning in the late 1990s, the band's lineup is now stable. Drummer Paul Deakin, guitarist Eddie Perez, and keyboardist Jerry Dale McFadden are joined by saxophonist and longtime sideman Max Abrams, trumpeters Julio Diaz and Lorenzo Molina Ruiz and young accordion phenom, Percy Cardona. Produced by Malo and Niko Bolas, Moon & Stars was recorded in Nashville, Santa Fe and Maurice, Louisiana. The sound is all Mavericks: large yet dynamic and retooled track-by-track to match the varying styles.

Malo wisely decided not only to co-write nearly every song for fresh ears and inspiration, but also to build a trio of duets with simpatico au courant female singer/songwriters: Nicole Atkins, Sierra Farrell, and Maggie Rose. Personal convictions color the breezy, bouncy melody of "Look Around You" with Rose and Malo closely riding a rolling, Latinized rhythm exhorting:  "So take the necessary time/ To open up your eyes/ And look around you … The meek will get it all/ Where the righteous have it wrong/ As heaven is theirs alone/ And some will never recognize/ Our differences are what/ Will make the world go on."

No Mavericks album would be complete without one of Malo's salutes to Roy Orbison, his greatest vocal influence, which here is the smooth, darkly-colored  "And We Dance." On the title track, strong-voiced Farrell is a rare equal vocal partner with Malo. Their voices weave and coil, with Farrell carrying on alone into the fade out.  Guitars and horns become an unstoppable force on the thumping "Without A Word." The cheeky finale "Turn Yourself Around" is Malo's unmistakable nod to another of his seminal influences: The Beatles. Quality songwriting and fierce determination have allowed the mighty Mavs to make a virtue out of their now familiar musical adventurism. © Robert Baird/Qobuz