If this really is an album of tango music, this could be a completely different experience. I know nothing about tango music aside from a couple of scenes in True Lies and that one episode of The Simpsons with the Tango De La Muerte. I really hope this new tango goes beyond the cliche I see in my head.
The album leads off with a nice piano/vibraphone/violin piece that vaguely sounds like you could tango to it (as if I knew what that meant). It is really lovely and dark, but the vibraphone gives it an unfortunate elevator vibe. About halfway through the beat picks up and follows a more typical tango beat for a few measures. I sometimes liken tango dancing to an intricate march, probably because every tango scene in a movie involves the characters at one point taking long synchronized steps across the dance floor. This short segment is the only part of the song that comes close to the idea of "tango" I have in mind. The rest of this song it feels like would be a chore to try and dance to because of how slow and quiet it is.
"Vibraphonissimo" is similarly a tough dance number because a large piece of the track is an unaccompanied vibraphone solo. There is a driving tempo, but I would find it difficult to generate enough energy to dance to one guy playing vibraphone. Also, The New Tango is a live album, and "Vibraphonissimo" gets a pretty loud ovation which just sounds weird following such a low-energy piece.
"Nuevo Tango" starts off the second side with serious tango energy. This is the tango song I imagine dancers really getting into. It alternates between really fiery anger, sweet sorrow, and haunting beauty. The piece is dominated by sharp violins that provide striking harshness to bombastic and rumbling percusion. It's a neatly arranged and well performed piece that says to me, "The Nuevo Tango is here, and it's fuckin' pissed about something."
I like how "Operation Tango" really sounds like a backing track from a tense action movie scene, as if Astor Piazolla and Bary Burton were on a mission to save tango from the clutches of a terrorist threat. I think I just came up with an idea for my next failed script. I'll put it on the pile. It would be my first musical.
There's a strange moment at the end of "Operation Tango" where the recording cuts out. When it comes back for the last few seconds of the song the quality is noticably shittier. It's almost like the soundboard recording of the stinger was lost so they had to use what was recorded by the audience mics. It was very weird. Why didn't they just re-record that last bit in the studio and overdub it?
I'm surprised how much I wound up liking The New Tango, particularly "Operation Tango". It wasn't as cliched as other genre albums I've dealt with, and even though the band on stage was relatively small (my guess: one piano, one vibraphone, one guitar, one bass, a couple of violins) the performace captured feels very full and varied. There were some long slow passages that got kinda boring, but I still liked it. 3 stars.
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