CucuLand

Album Review

Cucu Diamantes is the vocalist for New York's Yerba Buena, one of the most interesting Latin groups around. On this, her solo debut, she mixes all the sounds of the city — from the grooves of her native Cuba to hip-hop, rock, and soul — into a heady, cabaret-style blend that creates an imaginary time and place with extraordinary vividness. Diamantes shifts back and forth between Spanish and English, not just from song to song but within songs, and the music follows her, throwing red-hot salsa horns atop surf-rock guitars and soulful organ, with subtle DJ scratching in the background. "Alguien" rides a groove Los Fabulosos Cadillacs would be proud to call their own, and Diamantes rap-sings at a hundred miles an hour. In a way, she's positioning herself as almost a female version of August "Kid Creole" Darnell, creating a Latin-ish New York party that's got a big, throbbing, romantic heart at its center. Even a song with a title as potentially crass as "Show Me the Money Papi" rises above gold-digger R&B territory into something much more musically lush and lyrically thoughtful. This is an excellent record that ought to graduate Cucu Diamantes out of the urban-Latin-hipster niche Yerba Buena's ruled for quite a while, and into mainstream success.