This Album is a Whole Ass Vibe!
Hermanos Gutierrez’s 2022 release El Beuno Y El Malo (The Good and the Bad) is less an album and more a whole-ass vibe.
Come with me for a minute on a road trip. You’ve got no particular destination in mind, don’t really have anywhere to be, just you, miles of gorgeous road ahead and the achingly beautiful refrains of the Gutierrez brother’s guitars.
Close your eyes and slip into the driver’s seat of a 1960’s era Cadillac convertible that would be the envy of any Hollywood celebrity of the time. Just outside of Phoenix, the jagged peaks of the Superstition Mountains splendidly reflect in your rear-view mirror seemingly on fire as the fading sun washes them in pinks and oranges, purples and steel greys.
This isn’t the sort of road trip where we take the fast lanes or direct routes. Meandering east from Highway 60 to pick up State Route 77 outside of Globe to head south. Top down, hot air flowing around you, the car is thinking Tucson but maybe New Mexico, maybe Texas, maybe the end of the world. This is El Beuno Y El Malo. This album will make you question all of your life decisions … but not yesterday’s … tomorrow’s.
Clearly inspired by Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack for The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, the Ecuadorian-born brothers Estevan and Alejandro Gutierrez (yes, they’re actually brother) now call Switzerland home. Their 2020 debut, Hijos del Sol found its way into the ears of Black Keys guitarist/vocalist/producer Dan Auerbach who immediately signed them to his Easy Eye Sound record label and brought them to his Nashville studio to record the album.
“We came to Nashville with a clear sense of what we wanted to do… The more structure you have, the more you can improvise. You can feel prepared,but also open to changes. Nobody tried to impose an idea or change our essence. It was all about adding subtle things and enriching the whole — expanding this universe we had created.” Alejandro Gutiérrez said on the band’s website.
“You have to recalibrate yourself when you listen to their music,” Auerbach said in a Rolling Stone interview. “You gotta get down in there to be able to hear it all. They have this supernatural brother bond and I don’t think they even realize how into these rhythms and deep down into these songs they exist.”
The beauty of this album lies in its intimate spaciousness, a feat only achievable with the relationship of siblings – two individuals so deeply familiar with the movements and sighs of the other they intuitively know where the other is going and follow along. Throughout the album the brothers take turns playing lead and rhythm while the popping of guitar strings anchors each track to a beat, their mixing of surf, salsa, and Milonga a hypnotizing combination. Every track on this album is wrapped in a magic that will transport you wherever you want to go. I cannot encourage you enough to add this to your current rotation.