Los Hermanos Alacranes Celebrate a Colombia Bigger Than the Headlines on “Colombia Te Espera”

An accordion that once belonged to Paulo Franco’s father sits at the heart of “Colombia Te Espera,” the exhilarating new single from Los Hermanos Alacranes. It’s an instrument with a history: Franco remembers hearing his father play it during a childhood trip to Medellín in 1971, only to assume it had disappeared sometime in the decades that followed. His mother, it turned out, had kept it.

Now it plays again.

That detail could easily overwhelm the song around it. Instead, it gives “Colombia Te Espera” its emotional center. Keyboardist Daniel Clarke plays the instrument on the recording, bringing a piece of Franco’s family history into a song concerned with something much larger: the country that history came from.

And this is not a subdued exercise in nostalgia. “Colombia Te Espera” is big, colorful and wonderfully restless.

Franco takes us everywhere. Bogotá, Cali, Medellín, Cartagena, Santa Marta and Barranquilla all make appearances, alongside the Amazon and Magdalena rivers, the emeralds of Boyacá and the eastern Llanos. Salsa and vallenato mingle with Carnival, Colombian cowboy culture and the muscular rock and roll that has become central to the band’s identity.

It plays less like a travelogue than a rush of memories and associations — the kind of portrait of a country that could only come from somebody who carries it around with him.

There is added poignancy in hearing that celebration now. Colombia continues to emerge in international coverage through stories of political uncertainty and renewed violence, circumstances that inevitably shape how the country is perceived from abroad. “Colombia Te Espera” offers no political argument in response. It does something more instinctive: it turns up the volume on everything else.

The Colombia Franco presents is exuberant, geographically immense and culturally impossible to summarize neatly. It dances. It remembers. It changes from city to city. And Los Hermanos Alacranes seem determined to cram as much of that life as possible into a few minutes of music.

The approach suits them remarkably well.

Produced by GRAMMY-winning Los Lobos member Steve Berlin, “Colombia Te Espera” folds Latin traditions into rock without treating either as an exotic accessory to the other. There’s real muscle underneath the cultural references. The percussion moves, the guitars have bite and the whole thing carries the loose confidence of musicians who aren't particularly concerned with staying inside one genre.

That makes the band's description of its music as “cinematic rock with a Spanish soul” feel less like branding here and more like a fairly accurate diagnosis.

More importantly, the single never becomes overly reverential. There is heritage all over this record, but there is also pleasure. Los Hermanos Alacranes clearly understand that celebrating where you come from doesn't require standing solemnly in front of it.

You can dance to it.

That old accordion ultimately says more than any grand declaration could. A Colombian father plays it for his son in Medellín in 1971. More than half a century later, the son writes a rock song inviting strangers to discover Colombia, and the same instrument finds its way onto the recording.

There is something genuinely moving about that continuity, particularly in a song so interested in motion.

“Colombia Te Espera” arrives ahead of the band's forthcoming Twilight Songs, and if this is an indication of where Los Hermanos Alacranes are headed, the album should be fascinating. Their combination of Cumbia, Ranchera, Mariachi, Americana, power pop and rock and roll could become unwieldy in less capable hands. Here, it feels remarkably natural.

Maybe that's because “Colombia Te Espera” isn't really trying to explain Colombia to anyone.

It's simply opening the door.

And with this much life coming through the speakers, you'd be foolish not to walk in.