OK, loyal reader. Let’s play a little word association. Just blurt out the first thing that comes to your mind. Ready? Accordion. Was punk rock the first thing that popped into your head? Well, it might be after you hear Piñata Protest. How to explain this band. Well imagine if you took the Tex-Mex sounds of Texas Tornados, and made them louder and faster. That’s a good start to getting a feel for this band.
“Life on the Border” is an interesting song. This one sounds more like the Celtic punk of The Mahones than the Tex-Mex sounds of “Vato Perron.”
Did you ever have one of those days or nights that you knew you would regret, but you didn’t care? Pinata Protest wrote a song about that. In fact, the song includes the lyrics, “tomorrow we’ll regret today.” The next time you’re going to have a tomorrow to regret, make this your anthem.
The band has two interesting cover songs on this album: “Volver Volver” and “Cucaracha.” “Volver Volver” is not quite the ballad done by Vicente Fernandez. Mind you, the tempo is slower than some of the other songs on the album…until the end where the song takes on a tempo that would make Three Bad Jacks proud. As for “Cucaracha,” I’m willing to bet you’ve never heard a version of the song quite like this one. It has the familiar horns, but it’s also loud both in the melody and the vocals, and like a lot of punk songs, it’s very short. It’s about as much fun as a one-minute song can be.
El Valiente (Cosmica Records, 2013) is available now.