Puerto Rican Nights

Album Review

Continuing in the previous album's vein but with an overt tip of the hat to Caribbean styles evident in the album title, the all-covers/reinterpretations album Puerto Rican Nights shows Israeli quartet Boom Pam still out to look at the world, find the joy in peppy arrangements that come from everywhere and nowhere, and get things going right from the start. As such, if the opening song "Ushest" plays a familiar hand — a slow, graceful start that gets quicker and quicker to enthusiastic "heys!" as the beats and guitars rush along — it's all done with perfect elán. Moments like the bursts of Uri Brauner Kinrot's tubas and Dudu Kohav's on-point drumming as "Krai Dunavsko" switches from a calmer groove to a full-on kick-up-your-heels dance and then a massive feedback-laden acid rock sprawl (and then back again to a slow, steady buildup) to the cover of the song from which they take their name just add to the whole celebratory feeling. A number of guest vocalists take a bow throughout the album, either with covers or their own contributions, ranging from the Morricone Western manly-man vocalizing of Maor Cohen on the accomplished "Shayeret Harohvim" (matched later by two versions of "Ay Carmela") to the dancehall flow of Tomer Yosef on "Ani Rotse Lazuz," which thanks to the beats and stop-start silences isn't too far from being a crossover Top 40 radio hit in another universe. Perhaps one of the best tips of the hat to a mix-and-match past lies with arguably the original rock & roll world-spanning wanderer Dick Dale, whose "The Wedge" gets a loving, garage rock treatment with horns run through it that's sheer joy.