puta madre brothers

According to my Mexican housemate, if I went to see this band in their faux-homeland of Mexico, their extremely offensive name might have caused the sign to read something like this: P**a M***e Brothers! The East Brunswick Club on Friday night had no such trouble, instead hosting a sold-out show for the Puta Madre Brothers, who are disappearing from the Melbourne scene for a while.
After a huge year, releasing their debut album Queso Y Cojones (Cheese and Balls), The Puta Madre Brothers are taking their unique style over the seas and far away. Many missed out on a chance to say farewell, with tickets selling out early, and the venue seemed to be at bursting point. One chatty girl in the ladies’ informed me she’d been waiting two hours for her dinner. Her dinner was nachos; she cried “Isn’t this band Mexican? Surely they could help me out here!” The Melbourne Mexi-men clearly have a massive following
Curiosity often gets the better of me before reviewing. I want to know what to expect from a gig. I asked my friend Josh to explain his Puta Madre experience. I received little information, and a one word response (albeit an enthusiastic one) “Insane.”
On Friday night marching girls stood alongside off-duty Go-Go dancers and crowd- surfing rockers, all singing along early to an incredible cover of Fatman Scoop’s Be Faithful (Put Ya Hands Up) by support act TootTootToots: the chaotic flavour of the evening was set.
When the Brothers appeared, they were military-suited, mono-browed, perfectly-coiffed and instrument-clad under the glare of a hot Mexican sun…or maybe they were red stage lights... The sight was theatrical, comical, and as Josh so eloquently put it ”Intense”. Not only was this spicy trio hilarious, with stage presence and amazing (and increasingly sweaty) hair, they also had serious skill.
Their set was full of facial twitches, glamorous female back up singers, costumed trumpeters, broken Spanish wails and was paired with an unstoppable crowd. Their sound of Latin American garage rock caused a serious reaction on the floor, with infectious moving and shaking going on. Each as talented as the other, the spiciest trio this side of Northcote are an indescribable, tumultuous experience in themselves.
Tess Armstrong
PBSFM
21 AUGUST 2010
- WWW.PBSFM.ORG.AU

18 May 2010

The Puta Madre Brothers are a phenomenal live band. They are two guitarists and a bass player, each with their own drum kit (they call themselves one-man-band triplets) but if you had your back to the stage, you would swear that they were a five piece.
Between the three of them, they make a hell of a racket stomping on their kick drums, and bashing the cymbals with their guitars and various body parts. They somehow manage to do this and keep good time while strumming mariachi rhythms and picking out wild surf licks that swim in reverb.

There’s nothing delicate about their performances. They are high kilojoule, deep fried burrito with extra cheese, sock you in the guts shows, but their tunes are highly danceable and guaranteed to get a crowd moving.

The challenge then to capture this wild energy is a huge one, but the Puta Madre Brothers have somehow managed to pull it off. Queso y Cojones (cheese and balls), bottles their unique Mexican-Australian garage power like good strong tequila.
They’ve gone for a Lo Fi approach, which gives the songs a spontaneous, live feeling but they aren’t so raw as to be unlistenable. Their sound is Dick Dale meets Enrico Morricone with a Stooges garage aesthetic. Something that would sit perfectly in the next Tarantino movie (Quentin I hope you’re reading this). It really works!

I’m not sure if they have any Mexican blood (how does Melbourne breed these weird and wonderful artists) but they have at least taken beginners Español. They sing some pretty authentic Spanish on the few songs that have vocals.

In between the music there are samples of Spanish voices from movies and TV shows, which add a trashy, playful element to the album and give the listener a short repose from the relentless riffing.

It’s pretty exhausting getting through the whole 12 tracks on the album but ‘Putannany Twist’, ‘One Legged Horse Race’ and ‘El Toro Bravo’ are definitely must haves on your party shuffle.

- THEDWARF.COM.AU

It’s a long way from Detroit to Mexico. With the exception of the occasional cultural and criminological coincidence- petrol-guzzling cars, illicit drug trafficking and liberal amounts of street violence- there’s not a lot to associate the decaying automotive capital of the US with the United States’ closest southern neighbor. And while the North American Free Trade Agreement might have strengthened economic ties between the two regions, the cultural leap is sufficient to seriously undermine any useful comparison.

Clearly, no-one’s bothered to tell Puta Madre Brothers. Puta Madre Brothers (like most gringo linguistic appropriations, the band’s name is stuff of profane schoolboy humour) take their predominant musical cue from Ennio Moricone-styled Mexicana, via Dick Dale’s school of surf guitar. What’s unique- apart from the band’s tri-one-man-band composition- is that Puta Madre Brothers are equally at home with a soul aesthetic native to the polluted banks of Lake Michigan.

It’s there from the moment the hip-shakin’ surf-soul groin grindin’ of Putananny Twist kicks into action, skip through to Toes Of A Dead Man and you’re lounging around contemplating romance in the fading shadows of urban murder and mayhem. Hold the moment, and there’s the rickety motorcycle sock-hop soundtack Soy Una Fruta, the sublime inebriated forbidden love of Never A Lady Named Louigi before the elegantly stylish It’s A Long Way To Meximotown finds Berry Gordon lounging around on a Mexican beach.

Amid all the mind shaking, genre bending stuff come a few moments of comical Mexicana garage, ranging from the 36 consecutive tequila shot insanity of The One Legged Horse (Race), the Mescalin-spiked surf coast madness of El Toro Bravo or the computer-aided recreational frivolity of Nintendo Con Queso (Nintendo With Cheese), Grandes Pelotas Del Fuego is akin to The Beach Boys buried under a mountain of guacamole and Grandes Pantelnes possesses hooks so sharp they probably contravene the average State Labor Government’s anti-weapon legislation.

Like the Mexican region’s notoriously toxic colourful fungi, Puta Madre Brothers are not to be taken lightly- the are a band to be respected.

Patrick Emery
- BEAT MAGAZINE