Clandestino

1	Clandestino 2:27
2	Desaparecido 3:47
3	Bongo Bong 2:39
4	Je Ne T'Aime Plus 2:01
5	Mentira... 4:38
6	Lagrimas de Oro 2:57
7	Mama Call 2:20
8	Luna Y Sol 3:08
9	Por el Suelo 2:21
10	Welcome to Tijuana 4:05
11	Dia Lina... Dia Pena 1:30
12	Malegria 2:55
13	La Vie a 3:01
14	Minha Galera 2:21
15	La Despedida 3:08
16	El Viento 2:31

Barnes & Noble

As the prime mover behind the '80s French worldbeat-punks Mano Negra, Manu Chao, a Spanish-born son of a prominent Madrid journalist, set the template for Latin rock bands all over the Americas. The ingredients: breakneck rhythms, a babel of foreign languages, the ability to leap from punk to ska to salsa in a single bound - and an anarchist call for social justice and revolution. The band's exploits were the stuff of legend. There was the time they toured South America by boat, actually playing from the deck of a ship funded by the French government, and the ill-fated rail tour of Colombia that ended in a fiasco of banditry and guerrillas. Then there was Chao's disappearance - for years he traveled through Africa and South America, working in a circus, disproving the occasional rumors of his death. Clandestino is the hallucinatory account of these years in exile, a brilliant, primarily acoustic montage of found sounds, answering machine tapes, ukeleles, trombones, dancehall chatter and Chao's nursery-rhyme style lyrics. Like Beck without the hipster irony, Chao's songs straddle folk strains and post-modern pastiche, flowing from one into another in a twilight jumble of loneliness, a dreamlike suite that sounds like shortwave broadcasts from the end of the century. You need to tune in. Mark Schwartz

All Music Guide

The first solo album released by the former frontman of Mano Negra, Clandestino is an enchanting trip through Latin-flavored worldbeat rock, reliant on a potpourri of musical styles from traditional Latin and salsa to dub to rock & roll to French pop to experimental rock to techno. Chao's voice tends to be a bit nasally, but the best songs ("Mentira," "Mama Call," and the silly novelty "Bongo Bong") here benefit from his infectious, freewheeling delivery which incorporates balladry, chorus vocals, rapping, and tossed-off spoken-word passages. Just about every track has odd sampled bits from what sound like pirate radio-station broadcasts (a possible link to the title). There are so many great ideas on this record that it's difficult to digest in one listen, but multiple plays reveal the great depth of Manu Chao's artistry. John Bush