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San Patricio Image
Metascore
78

Generally favorable reviews - based on 10 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
7.4

Generally favorable reviews- based on 5 Ratings

  • Summary: The concept album about a group of Irish US soldiers who deserted to join the Mexican army during the Mexican-American War was an idea by The Chieftains' Paddy Moloney and co-producer Ry Cooder.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 10
  2. Negative: 0 out of 10
  1. Other guests include Linda Ronstadt ("A la Orilla de un Palmar"), Van Dyke Parks and Los Tigres del Norte (who both appear on "Canción Mixteca"). The result is as thrilling as it is enlightening.
  2. Mojo
    80
    The Chieftains lay a vibrant carpet of colour but veering between joyous and heartbreaking, the fiery Mexican element is what makes it so compelling. [Apr 2010, p.105]
  3. San Patricio, though, is their most accomplished cross-cultural project to date.
  4. They share the beat, tapping it on the bodhran, and slip in counterpoint from fiddle or Celtic harp. But they don’t try to make their collaborators sound Irish. Like the San Patricios, but with a happier outcome, they put Mexico first.
  5. This is a transatlantic musical campaign whose virtuosity, verve and sheer eccentric heart make it hard to resist.
  6. While this album sounds like the Chieftains playing in fusion mode, it is so much more ambitious than anything they’ve attempted before. Some of the music here is contemporary, though much of it is over a century old; yet it reaches past its settings into the present day, telling of the indelibly rich meeting of two cultures oppressed by a third.
  7. Q Magazine
    60
    It works surprising well. [Apr 2010, p.120]

See all 10 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. SamM
    Apr 13, 2010
    10
    Its Ry Cooder! With the Chieftains! It has to be a 10.