Esencia

Studio-recorded mariachi needs to be kept loose and as live-sounding as possible to work at all. With its female and male choruses, whoops, whistles, smacking kisses, range of timbres and raw-sounding production, Mariachi Herencia de México have just about nailed it. Even the string arrangements have a winningly overbaked quality, switching tempo at lasso speed and laying on the lushness like a soundtrack for a camp old Mexican movie, or even a Speedy Gonzales cartoon. The brass is not limited to blasting out wails and percussive punches; seemingly in dialogue with the vocals and other instruments, it's playful, cheeky and full of humour.

The sleeve lists 26 performers plus three guests. Perhaps this accounts for the energy of the performances and the variety of moods across the 15 songs, which range from the classic boleros (‘Bésame Mucho’ and ‘Piel Canela’) to ironic rancheras like ‘El Gallo de Oro’, which rolls along like a half-tipsy cowboy to a medley lifted from the soundtrack of a 1964 film of the same name. There's something almost amateurish in the rawness of this mega-band and a definite sense that they're continually trying new things – yet exquisite harmonising and crisply confident vocals raise the collection above what we normally expect of mariachi. Great fun, all told, and it's lovely to see and hear women to the fore in the traditionally macho world of Mexican mariachi.