Music Review: Raul Malo, Lucky One

By Steve Morley

The Cuban-American singer Raul Malo has never been shy about showing his affection for all manner of vintage popular music. He’s equally adept at the dramatic pop of Roy Orbison, the suave stylings of Sinatra and the California country of Buck Owens, a major element in the sound of Malo’s hit-making 1990s band, The Mavericks. His latest release, Lucky One, is clearly influenced by sounds from the 1950s and 60s, but not limited by the stylistic boundaries in place during those eras. The most adventurous tracks create imaginary unions between singers and styles in the same way the well-known illustration “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” placed Elvis, James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe at the same late-night restaurant counter.

Nowhere is the mingling of genres as pronounced or winning as on the title cut, which begins with a subterranean guitar twang big enough to underscore the opening titles of a big-screen western. Over a dark and moody minor key, Malo surveys the pitfalls of romantic entanglement before morphing into an implausibly upbeat chorus that blends a Marty Robbins Mexican border ballad with ecstatic Tom Jones lounge-pop. “You Always Win” recalls European-influenced mid-50s pop like “The Poor People of Paris”—the kind of song that would nicely suit Lawrence Welk—but carries a rakish “Mack the Knife” swagger, dominated by stylish electric guitars that cross The Ventures with Chet Atkins. “One More Angel” straddles genre and time lines, sounding like the Mexican standby “Guantanamera” re-imagined as a slower version of “La Bamba” and recorded by Tom Petty. The track departs from the album’s otherwise straightforward romanticism, using a tale of a young girl’s premature death to prompt consideration of eternity as well as how to wisely use the time we’re given. (“Take all the time/ To tell the ones you love how much you really care/ So when they’re gone/ The first thoughts that come to mind aren’t things you should’ve shared/ Don’t let memories go in vain…”)

Not all the tracks are quite as multi-dimensional—“Crying For You” is a transparent Roy Orbison sound-alike circa 1963, while “Something Tells Me” tunefully echoes Roy during the pop comeback he enjoyed just before his death in 1988. Here, Malo’s exquisite voice comes surprisingly close to capturing Orbison’s soaring and trembling tenor. “Moonlight Kiss,” a near-parody of 1950s Italian pop á la Dean Martin, is one of a few lighthearted offerings that help to offset the wistful tone Malo often favors.

Both Malo’s vocals and tasteful guitar work are sumptuous treats throughout, and both are delivered with a casual ease that both recalls the imperfections of the analog age and keeps the album’s nostalgic exercises from sounding too studied. The absence of post-modern irony makes the retro-pop confections on Lucky One not unlike the experience of cracking open a fortune cookie—something you can look forward to even though you already know what’s inside.

Audio Clips

"Crying for You"

"Moonlight Kiss"

"Something Tells Me"

"You Always Win"