Everything about the Animeros seems to come straight from the movies. Take the Austin trio’s cinematic debut album, ¡Qué Bárbaro!, whose splice of Latin rhythms with soul, funk, psychedelia – and beyond – just needs a Tarantino movie to soundtrack. “We’re here, Quentin,” guitarist Mauro Lopez says. “Hit us up!”
Then there’s the Hollywood-worthy story of how they came to record it for Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound label.
“We got together for the second time as the Animeros to play South by Southwest,” Lopez says. “It was, like, a 30-minute unofficial showcase on a hotel roof patio. Like the Beatles playing on the Apple rooftop, I guess. [Laughs] A week later, our bassist gets an email; Dan saw us play. He came into town and we had breakfast. What shocked us all was his knowledge about Latin music. It comes from him being a vinyl DJ. He’s like, ‘Hey, do you want to come to Nashville and record?’”
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Just as fantastical, Lopez was invited to bolster his workhorse Telecaster Vintera ’60s and Cry Baby with the Black Keys man’s trove of rare guitars, amps and pedals. “I can’t remember the models, but he’d be like, ‘Hold on, let me grab this one’ and put, like, a vintage Danelectro in my hands. ‘What do you think?’ He just had an ear for it.”
If their rise sounds almost annoyingly easy, be assured that Lopez, Nicolas Sánchez (bass) and Nick Tozzo (drums/percussion) have individually paid their dues, grinding out a decade-plus on the Austin circuit. But it’s as the Animeros that something has clicked, with the trio’s melting-pot style meeting their gift for painting vivid pictures.
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“With instrumental music, it’s like, ‘How do you tell a story without words?’” Lopez says. “We might be writing a song and realize it feels like driving through the West Texas desert at night looking for UFOs. Or, ‘Man, this riff sounds like a Tarantino fight scene.’ Our favorite one is from Kill Bill, with Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu in the snow. It starts off with these claps and you just know something’s going down.”
But as the affable guitarist reminds us, the Animeros are here to make us dance, not fight. “There’s enough bad things going on in the world, man. When people hear this music, you forget all that. Something about the rhythm is contagious. You just can’t help but move.”
