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Pachanga review: Maneja Beto
“Indie en Espanol” is what Maneja Beto calls itself on its MySpace page and why not? There are guitars, there are synths, the band owns the means of production — sounds pretty indie to me. And then there are the lyrics in Spanish. Perfect!
Kicking around since ’02, Maneja Beto mixes the harmonies of Mexican folk music with the driving 4/4 of U.S. rock, New Wavey synths with occasional polyrhythms, distortion with dance grooves.
They could have used a little more shade, however. “Can anyone move the trees about 20 feet forward,” keyboardist Bobby Garza joked in the middle of the band’s set. No can do, man; he looked like he was going to boil alive at Waterloo Park, even though it was well after 6 p.m. His synths, however, which can sound a little light on your stereo, took on a powerful, music-of-the-spheres quality reminiscent of Joy Division or New Order.
In fact, most of the set felt squarely in another tradition entirely — Austin psychedelic rock. Nelso Valente’s guitar seemed equally capable of noodly solos as indie lilt, as deft at delivering space music as the rhythmic strum crucial to making the dance elements swing and pulse on songs such as “Apertura” and “Campanera.” It’s thrilling stuff, equally for the head and feet, a goal pysch-rock often misses by a mile.
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