The Ry Cooder-instigated Buena Vista Social Club has become a veritable industry: the initial album, a doco of the same name (at this year's film festival), and now spin-off albums.
The original album, those by veteran Club pianistReuben Gonzalez and the recent Jools Holland doco on Havana just made you want to be there under the warm nights listening to this loose-limbed, Afro-rhythm jazz-pop with a drink in your hand. Can the international franchise of Cuban restaurant venues like the House of Blues be far off? Jimmy Buffett built an industry around something similar. In a way, you wish.
Ferrer's album - produced by Cooder and calling on a similar roster of musicians including Gonzalez - is an almost horizontally pleasurable outing by this beguiling, lazy-phrase singer. With dramatics added by the band and a chorus of women singers, these impenetrably Spanish lyrics coil around a warm, welcoming and exotic atmosphere which is very hard to dislike.
