Review: Mariachi el Bronx, The Thekla

It’s a rum old world eh? Would anyone consider this a viable plot for a rockumentary? Hardcore LA punk band forms a spin-off playing traditional Mexican folk music as a one off: band finds a life of its own and then sells out a show in the West Country after three critically & commercially well received CDs. On a boat. Well, that’s why the truth is stranger than fiction. The band concerned are The Bronx and the offshoot is Mariachi el Bronx, and what makes it even more unexpected is the offshoot being supported by another offshoot.

Pounded by the Surf feature members of The Bronx and Mariachi and play surf music made by non-surfers for surfers. Incidentally, if the band keeps sprouting off-shoots at this rate it won’t be long before they’ll be capable of hosting a one day festival featuring entirely Bronx related projects. Pounded play instrumental surf, but have something of a country twang – think Ghost Riders in the Sky meets Miserlou. They dress for the former rather than the latter with Stetsons and tasselled Nudie-style jackets to the fore, but rather than picking up Hank Williams a Brit audience will also find Hank Marvin in the lead playing – but offset by aggressive drumming that’s more Tommy Ramone than Tony Meehan. The set was well played and well received, priming the audience for the headliners.

The touring version of Mariachi are an eight piece and to be fair the sold out crowd were in the palm of their hands from the opening greetings. Matt Caughthran makes for an engaging front man, plenty of interaction with the crowd (including a fine catch when offered a Red Stripe. By a punter in the balcony). Much like all of the US punk & metal bands, his stage banter is full of profanity and he seemed to believe that the band’s payment was proportionally related to the number of times he could call the crowd, ahem, melon-farmers. As an aside I’d just like to advise US bands that the vast majority of British gig goers have never farmed their own melons, and have no intention of doing so in the future.

Opening with Right Between the Eyes the sound was crisp & clear and the audience were singing every word from the off. The set was jammed packed with tunes from all three albums, 48 Roses standing out along with Sleep Walking – but it was arguably My Brother the Gun that hit home hardest. Crowd response started at ecstatic and went up from there – faces must have ached from singing along whilst maintaining massive grins. In fact the whole gig saw miles and miles of smiles on every face.

Post encores Caughthran confirmed again that we had been the best melon farming audience of the tour and they’d love to give us another half an hour…but the curfew stood between us and that. Take the Mariachi test; go see ‘em and try not to grin for an hour and a half whilst jiving like a melon farmer.