Corazón y Hueso

When Argentinian rocker Daniel Melingo took a stab at tango in 1998 with songs like ‘Narigón’ and ‘José el Cuchiyero’ on his debut Tangos Bajos, he gave tango canción a much-needed shot in the arm and created a new audience for a genre that had fallen out of favour. Critics call his music ‘punk tango’; Melingo calls it ‘tango bizarro’. Fourteen years and five albums on, he’s still telling funny, fable-like stories about losers, grotesques and lowlifes. Half of the songs on Corazón y Hueso are raw tango dubs laced with lunfardo, the prison slang beloved of tangopoets as well as football fans. But Melingo has always had a soft spot for folk music and the sweet-sounding ‘Negrito’ is almost a lullaby, while ‘Fabula’ finds him doing a very un-punky singalong with kids.

The chiaroscuro mood works: just as the dark songs are tongue-in-cheek, so the lighter ones exude more hope than faith. Certainly mellower than he used to be, Melingo remains a wag and a wit, and his heavy smoker’s voice is growlier than ever. He tilts his fedora to all kinds of influences, from the West End musical to Edmundo Rivero, from Bukowski to Carlos Gardél, ll within his country’s wonderful, underrated, under-exported folklore heritage. This is more a flirtation with surfaces than a true roots music, but it remains deeply interesting, exploratory and provides tango – born on the margins – with a healthy edginess.