Music Reviews

Album Review: Kinky – ‘Reina’

By Jeff Swindoll Feb 21, 2008, 16:18 GMT

My first reaction when getting the CD of Kinky’s latest effort was that I didn’t know that Coffin Joe had a band [either insert rimshot or confused look here – notice guy in top hat on cover]. 

Kinky consists of Gilberto Cerezo (vocals), Ulises Lozano (keyboards), Carlos Chairez (guitar), Omar Gongora (drums), and Cesar Pliego (bass).  A little research turned up that this is a re-issue of their 2006 album and adds a cover of Wall of Voodoo’s “Mexican Radio” and a remix of Kinky’s “A Donde Van Los Muertos” by Brazilian Girls. 

I was expecting something more akin to Mexican music and was surprised when there was a flavor of that but heavy doses of techno and pop on this album.  Being somewhat inexperienced in the genre, I was expecting something more akin to mariachi music (being so inexperienced I note that Wikipedia lists a cornucopia of Mexican music so my thought of mariachi might be an incorrect description of what I was really expecting). 

From my understanding Kinky sings more songs in English on this album than on their previous ones, but I still thought the Spanish songs were energetic and very up-tempo. There are even some lion sound effects on “Leon.” 

It was an interesting techno adventure south of the border for this reviewer.