Manu Chao
La Radiolina

THE REVIEW

"Submission is a permanent suicide"
Manu Chao 

Manu Chao  is not (only) a slick operator, let me make this point.
Even before the album was released, he broke the rules of the music market and made the single Rainin paradize available for free on the internet.

After the events of the G8, he was unanimously consecrated to the pantheon of the "a-lot-of-left" crowd by hordes of long-haired, spaced-out, nu-no-global, fake-no-global types, etc., who flock to his concerts to partake in a tacit 'leftist' collective ritual.

And perhaps even beyond his intentions.

In the end, La Radiolina is a well-made album, slender in terms of creative impulses, despite the vibrant fusion of other genres like uptempo, rumba, rock, and ska.  Many prefer to remember him in the previous lineup, as the eternal Mano Negra, for whom the current experience is nothing but a minor "how we were", a constant rehash of themes, and music. In short: with Proxima... estacion... esperanza, he had already overstepped the mark. And by a lot.

The flurry of small controversies and disappointed voices, as read in September's Mucchio Selvaggio, claiming that Manu Chao always makes the same two or three songs "even at the risk of becoming today's Inti Illimani," do not do justice to this latest album. In it, the presence of guitars and rock elements is more significant. Overall, it is an enjoyable record.

21 tracks, many of which are dedicated to themes dear to the genre: political commitment, social denunciation, a measure of self-promoting fellatio, which the multilingual Mr. Chao sings in Castilian, French, Italian, and Spanish. Among the most inspired tracks (oh!) Rainin paradize, already a single with a video directed by Emir Kusturica, Tristezza Maleza, with appropriately sad and gloomy tones, Siberia, copied from Rainin paradize, El Kitapena, copied from Siberia which was copied from Rainin paradize, and La Vida Tombola, dedicated to Maradona.

Like a crayfish, Manu Chao alternates lively episodes with moments of monotony that scrape the bottom of the barrel. Unfortunately, the latter are more frequent than the former.