The number of Spanish speakers in the United States hovers somewhere around 35 million, making the U.S. the fifth largest Spanish speaking country in the world. Of that group, roughly 28 million Spanish-speaking Americans are of Mexican descent, and that includes around a million people in Chicago alone (two-thirds of whom were actually born in Mexico). That leaves the Windy City the second largest Mexican immigrant community in the United States, after Los Angeles.
Which is all to say, when the inevitable Spanish language indie big bang happens, it's as likely to begin in Chicago as just about anywhere else in America. Sure, right now the cool kids may prefer their exotica in French, Portuguese, or Swedish-accented English, but demographically speaking, more and more of those future cool kids will be Spanish/English bilingual, at least, and the music they listen to will likely reflect that. It's practically a statistical certainty, especially once you factor in Mexico's own ongoing alt-rock and indie explosion.
That's where Chicago's Allá steps in. Brothers Angel and Jorge Ledezma cram countless fresh ideas and stylistic conflations into each track of Es Tiempo, Allá's debut, and without the usual distractions or whimsy. Singer Lupe Martinez's gorgeous oohs and ahhs are overdubbed into a wall of breezy coos. The loping rhythm of "Tu Vida" is rococo yet subtle, the drum breaks and scratching for once relegated to the background instead of shoved in your face. Several songs-- like "Solo un Milagro", "Una Dia Otra Noche" (with its sprightly strings), and "Sigue Tu Corazon"-- ride Latin rhythms but never lean on them like a crutch. "El Movimiento" is funk-laden shoegaze. The title track is a lovely, dreamy cloud with a vague allegiance to trance-inducing krautrock drone.
And as if the music weren't great enough, the backstory's a winner, too: Jorge, then playing with brother Angel in the band Defender, threw himself into his day job and moved in with his parents, all in an effort to save up the cash to bring the music in his mind to life. Seven years and reportedly $40,000 later, Es Tiempo is it, and the investment of both time and money may explain why the results sound so self-assured.
Steeped as it is in pop, jazz, mild psych, and post-rock in equal measure, the group comes off a little like a south of the border Stereolab. Granted, Stereolab's already got more than a little Mexico in it (R.I.P. Esquivel), and anyway, such comparisons, while perhaps initially useful as an entree, remain superficial at best. The nicest thing about Es Tiempo is the way it not only recalls disparate cool touchstones without ripping them off, but also avoids the sorts of crass pitfalls and clichés that could have sunk the project. Indeed, Allá's ambitions are such that one suspects (and hopes) more acts will follow in the cross-border path-- both geographical and metaphoric-- that this band is blazing.
