Chicano Batman’s new single “Friendship (Is a Small Boat in a Storm)” and the forthcoming album it’s on, Freedom Is Free (ATO Records) will pose a classic dilemma for longtime fans. On the one hand, you want the band whose music has moved and inspired you to have as much mainstream success as possible. They’ve earned it. They deserve it. But you also kinda relish their cult status, knowing they’re a “best kept secret” kind of deal, even as every release from them inches their cultural profile higher and higher. They’re not yet part of the “content” fed into the meat grinder of contemporary pop culture. You’re both protective of and selfish about them.
For longtime Chicano Batman fans, their singular blend of psychedelic rock, Latin soul, and old school R&B, topped with a throwback Latin-cool sartorial style, has made them a rare, welcome respite from the hype and manufactured drama of the 21st century music landscape. The new album, their third, produced by producer Leon Michels (El Michels Affair, The Arcs,) pushes the soul strain of their creative DNA to the foreground, as heard on the exquisitely funky “Friendship (Is a Small Boat in a Storm,)” the first single whose Eddie Kendricks-style lead falsetto pulls a grin all the way across your face. New York’s all-female Mariachi Flor de Toloache have featured vocals on the song and in the video. Freedom is Free drops in March.
Top photo courtesy ATO Records.
