Written by Margo Gee
Have you ever driven through a West Texas sunset? If so, you might have an idea of what it is like to listen to Hermanos Gutiérrez.
Being only anecdotally familiar with Hermanos Gutiérrez through their song “Low Sun”, when I walked into 713 Music hall and saw a sea of chairs and heads set out where time and time before had stood the usual throng of bodies, I realized I was in for a very different concert than my usual.
The lead singer of Y La Bamba, Luz Elena Mendoza (a repeat guest on popular music beacons like Tiny Desk and KEXP), sat down with a notebook of lyrics, a friend, and a guitar to welcome us in. Performing in Spanish, she curled stories about interpersonal relationships around the ears of the crowd and settled us in for what was surely going to be a meditative evening. Though her music was a comfort performed in a duo, I wonder what her music is like with a more robust instrument section. Hers were the last sung words I heard that evening.
After a brief break, the brothers walked on stage. Alejandro (lap steel guitar, guitar) dressed somewhat soberly compared to his brother Estevan (guitar, bongos), who was adorned in brighter colors and a hat. And they began to play.
Hermanos Gutiérrez captures the rolling hills and curves of a sunset drive in the American Southwest, the hum of a motor on that long, sun-baked highway with hours left on the drive to Somewhere. Their sound is topographical, and as such is a truly delicate thing. Each song has a narrative quality to it as it develops, even wordlessly, and can really make you feel like a stationary traveler. And they know it too- more than once throughout the instrumental concert Estevan, the younger of the two brothers, invoked the desert in his interludes between songs. Unfortunately, just like the American Southwest, you rapidly realize that there is a whole lot of the same view, for miles and miles.
While their opener, “Thunderbird” (a purported favorite of theirs), and other standouts such as “Tres Hermanos” and their accelerando performance of “Low Sun” were great outward spirals of melodies and really pulled me out of my seat, as the concert progressed, I found myself surprised and disheartened that the melodies and tempo became almost uniform, even between songs from different albums. Their music can and will make you feel as though you are traversing vast spaces, even universes, from your seat. For that to feel samey? Chilling.
That being said, I feel the brothers really shine when the looping machine comes out. As in their performance of “Cumbia Lunar” and in their beautiful, swimming encore, they proved that they know how to dynamically build off of their own created sound, and I only wish their setlist had allowed them to showcase that ability more. The looping machine also cut through the sameness I was feeling, allowing for a more complex construction of melody.
Throughout their discography, the brothers use muted strums of their guitar, or chops, as a form of percussion. In album form, this practice was mixed such that it did not distract from the rhythms flowing out of their guitars. In concert, it was a great heartbreak of mine to hear that these chops were not quieted at all and were like a crashing pickaxe across the measures of their music, almost stabbing the listener. By far the loudest part of several of their songs, this mixing mishap utterly swallowed the rhythm of the gently flowing guitar they infused throughout their set. I truly can’t understate how jarring it was in such a gentle sonic environment :(.
Hermanos Gutiérrez are a band with an expertly refined sound and a real ability to pull you into a grand voyage across arid parts unknown. In a concert setting, though, without some of the instrumentation present on their studio albums, this desert sound becomes too literal: as the vast, ancient ocean rolls outward before you, features you found remarkable at the beginning of your journey catch your eye no longer as you cast out towards the setting sun.