★★★★★
These dozen tracks from the decade-plus following Milan Latino's comp reinforce my suspicion that Cuba's essential postcharangists only got better as they went along. The songs roll their hips for an extra minute or two, which never hurts when the grooves are so sexy, and the comedy comes through even if you don't understand one word in 50 ("Hey, playa, I know that one, and they sure say mas a lot, must be what they want"). I also appreciate the synth splats on "De La Habanas A Matanzas...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2010-06-11
★★★★★
Like James Brown in the '70s, they record too much. But if the Duke Ellington Orchestra was this vital after 30 years on the boards, it didn't showcase the new songs to prove it. Find the right section of any large metropolitan record store and the array of Los Van Van titles will make you dizzy; for those of us without Spanish on our tongues and Latino in our marrow, they blur together...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Catchy, simplistic, ramming home the clave, not shy of syndrums or syn-anything else, Los Van Van are the class of Castro-era Cuban pop. I still prefer Mango's rerecorded Songo, where four of the great hits here got richer, longer, and an elegant touch slower. But these cheesy '70s originals are the golden oldies of underdevelopment...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
This Paris-rerecorded compilation of top tunes by Cuba's top band is tasteful like Sesame Street rather than Masterpiece Theatre, stealing wittily from commercial culture rather than embalming good ideas in respectability. Electronics, double-hook song structures, sly vocal switchovers--all fit smoothly into a simple, expandable groove that's mellower and more polyrhythmic than Nuyorican salsa. Making it an ad for subsidized pop whether you like it or not.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
coro as groove instrument ("Disco Azúcar")
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
No wonder this ferocious fifteen-piece band is known as the Rolling Stones of Cuba. Los Van Van's technically dazzling songs are as much about rock & roll fever as they are about the percolating combustion of salsa. On their U.S. major-label debut, musical director and bassist Juan Formell celebrates the band's thirtieth anniversary by perfecting his trademark mixture of Afro-Caribbean roots and mainstream Anglo sensibilities...
- www.rollingstone.com
2009-06-08
★★★★★
What to say about a band that have been slaying dancefloors and radio stations for four decades and who have been nicknamed the 'Rolling Stones of Latin Music'? Not much that hasn't already been said, clearly, though this collection of Los Van Van's leanest and meanest does manage to remind us of why this irrepressible Cuban super-group have such a glowing - and lengthy - legacy...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2009-06-04