Description
The veteran L.A. band’s 17th studio release, is a covers album featuring songs by a slate of fellow Southern California artists.
For all the trailblazing musical acts who’ve emerged from Los Angeles, very few embody the city’s wildly eclectic spirit more wholeheartedly than Los Lobos. Over the last five decades, the East L.A.-bred band has made an indelible mark on music history by exploring an enormous diversity of genres — rock ’n’ roll and R&B, surf music and soul, mariachi and música norteña, punk rock and country — and building a boldly unpredictable sound all their own.
In a nod to their neighborhood, Native Sons opens with the wide-eyed frenzy of Love Special Delivery by Thee Midniters, an East L.A. garage band and one of the first Chicano rock groups to ever score a major hit in the U.S. From there, it features favorites and deep cuts by other Los Angeles luminaries such as The Beach Boys, WAR, Buffalo Springfield, Jackson Browne and more. In a particularly meaningful moment for the band, Native Sons includes a fiery cover of Flat Top Joint by The Blasters, the seminal L.A. roots-rock band who helped pave the way for their signing to Slash Records in the early ’80s (and whom counted Steve Berlin as a member before his joining Los Lobos). The album’s title track is its sole original song, a loving homage to Los Angeles that sounds right at home amid so many classic tracks.
