No Me Rompas Las Bolas

The idiomatic expression Juan Carlos Cáceres uses for the title of this album – his third with percussionist Marcelo Russillo and bassist and co-songwriter Carlos Buschini is one I’ve been meaning to use about his songs for years: don’t break my balls. Argentinian-born Cáceres, who’s been living in Paris since 1968, has ploughed a profitable furrow playing a gentle, jazzy tango he claims is a bridge with tango negro the African tango of the late 1800s and early 1900s that was wiped out as the genre won middle-class approval and got ‘whitened’ in the process. Putting aside the question of whether music can be played to a manifesto, I can’t hear the sexiness of habanera, the anger of murga or the African heat of candombe in any of these tracks. What I can hear are frequent notes of promise – the title-track is almost an infectious chant, Daniel Melingo’s cameo on the opening track ‘Suena el Tambor’, purrs promisingly, ‘Que Milonga mi Amor’ has a groovy piano rhythm.

But, overall, if this tango lite is inoffensive and often tuneful, it finally wears you down because it’s lazy. Cáceres is a limited singer and his lyrics are always peppered with lines like ‘the milonga is no use any more’ or ‘the beat is all over’ There’s an indolence in the selection too: ‘Tango Negro’ and ‘Toca Tango’ have both appeared on recent albums. Nostalgia is integral to tango – it was born as the song of exiles missing families, pizzas and pretty girls back home – but Cáceres’ particular brand of it is emotionally tired and politically dated, and the music and vocals sound drained of anything like energy or edge. Time to throw in the fedora, methinks.