Let the Festivities Begin!

This is good-time instrumental party music that mixes Turkish Psych, South American cumbia, surf-rock and reggae, sometimes with the poise of Khruangbin but more often with the tequila swagger of a Tarantino caper. [Mar 2022, p.31]

What’s crucial is that ‘Let the Festivities Begin!’ never feels like a case of throwing all of these different textures at the wall to see what sticks; instead, the sounds of everywhere from Turkey to Peru to Argentina are wound carefully together on the maddeningly catchy likes of ‘FFS’ and ‘Change of Heart’, before being relayed with exhilarating gusto. There will be few debuts this year that feel like such glorious exercises in musical technicolour.

Every second of the record is unconventional, rule-breaking, and mind-bending; the kind of album to ride a horse into sunset to. The Bitchos kick ass and you just know they enjoyed every lasso-twirling second of it.

From the funky ’60s flavor of “Las Panteras” to the quasi-prog rock of closer “Lindsey Goes to Mykonos” the whole shebang is very well-rendered and highly entertaining.