4 out of 5

Label: Master of Bates

Produced by: Jonathan Bates

Big Black Delta’s Trágame Tierra is:

1.       Insanely, toe-tappingly infectious

2.       Maybe sorta’ emotionally empty

…And I’m totally okay with that combo.

I know: I’m usually the guy ragging on the band for dropping some aspect of the full picture, whether I don’t feel the playing is “committed” enough, or that the sequencing isn’t immersive, or that the lyrics feel like placeholders.  And yet, Big Black Delta’s second album – by most reckonings (perhaps mine included) an empty headed, occasionally generic, dance album – earns high marks from me.  What’s BBD’s (otherwise known as Jonathan Bates) secret to winning over this particular reviewer?  Well, m’lads and ladies, it turns out it’s quite simple, and is often the ingredient that elevates things we may otherwise judge harshly, like soulDecision or Sum 41: passion.

Passion?  Passion??  Of course, what defines ‘passion’ is personal, and varies, and it doesn’t exactly equate to sincerity, as Bates, evidenced on the prior BBD album and Mellowdrone discs, is smarter than a lot of the singalong, auto-tuned electro-pop he’s affecting here, but he’s also far from winking at us: for Trágame Tierra, he pursued a particular sound – 80s-infused indie pop (dig those Debbie Gibson guest vocals…) – and went all in.  He’s the straight-laced dude who has taken to the club spotlight and is unabashedly sweating along to some bass-thumping oldies.

And though the basic, happy-go-lucky or aw-shucks lyrics and focus on getting-you-movin’ groove certainly keep that vibe alive and well, track after track, the compositional wizardry that drove us to follow Bates from Mellowdrone to BBD is still apparent, the album blending in elements of country and folk without, verily, missing a beat.  The emotional backbone that strikes during the icy drone of the closing title track and in the way the opening falsetto breaks into Steer the Canyon’s beat starts to take shape as border-defining bookends; this weight is, admittedly, sorely missed from the album’s in-between contents.  But that the material is otherwise so good, and so into what it’s doing more than makes up for that loss.