This second album from Andres Levin's Latin/funk/hip hop/boogaloo collective is bracketed by three silly skits that almost sink the whole enterprise. Skip tracks one, twelve and sixteen ("Dr. Aneub Abrey's Island Blues Cure: Parts i, ii and iii") and you've got a lightweight but very entertaining album, with guest appearances by artists as diverse as John Leguizamo, Gogol Bordello and Joe Bataan.
The phrase "island life" conjures thoughts of soft breezes, crashing surf and funny-colored drinks with little umbrellas in them, and that's definitely all here. There are steel drums in the first "Dr. Aneub Abrey" cut, and an unstoppable Latin beat in "Burrito" and "La Vida La Life", yet as the genuinely annoying guest DJ Ajay Naidu observes in the skit-like opening, NYC is an island, too. There's an urban grit to tracks like "Sugar Daddy" (with Leguizamo, Les Nubians and a sample of Celia Cruz's "Azucar") and "Fever" that breaks through the beach vacation clichés. "Fever", Island Life's most overly hip-hop cut, is particularly strong, adding rapid-fire rhymes about teenage love (provided by Dead Prez's M1) to its hot-rhythmed Latin choruses. Joe Bataan's guest spot on the horn and maraca-flavored "Bilingual Girl" stands out, too. It's an irresistible party anthem, with an elbow-nudging chorus of "All I want is a bilingual girl / Cos two tongues are better than one." And for sheer how-does-that-possibly-work? oddity, you can't beat "Belly Dancer", a collaboration between Yerba Buena and gypsy punks Gogol Bordello. It sounds untenable, but the conga beat pushes perfectly under swirling strings in a mix that's Latin, East European and Middle Eastern all at once.
The guests add variety, but Yerba Buena does just fine by itself, too. "Bla, Bla, Bla" rides a feverish salsa-rhythmed guitar over verses that take aim at insincerity gushing from Dubya and an unnamed record company exec. The final spoken-word outro, in which a weasel voice expresses conditional love for Yerba Buena, is everything you need to know about how the record industry deals with border-crossing acts like this: "Wow, I love this fucking band... it's the best live / Latin / boogaloo / hip-hop thing I've ever seen. I got to talk to my radio guy / I got to talk to my marketing guy / I got to talk to my sales guy / I got to check with my A&R guy / I got to check with my lawyers... Bla bla bla bla bla bla..."
Island Life's main problem is the skits, which are annoying the first time you listen and excruciating after that. You've got a drink, your friends are over, you can see a nice sunset from the fire escape... Do you really want to have to keep hitting the skip button?
