Totimoshi: Milagrosa (2008)
On their fifth studio LP, 2008’s Milagrosa, Bay Area trio Totimoshi made a conscious attempt to broaden their horizons, beyond the heavy-handed post-grunge influences (mostly Nirvana and the Melvins) that had dominated their earlier catalog.
Lyrically, the band’s leading couple, vocalist/guitarist Tony Aguilar and bassist Meg Castellanos, drew from their shared Latin heritage to assemble a semi-conceptual album, even inserting a few Spanish-sung verses into “El Emplazado.”
On the semi-title cut, “Milagroso,” the bitter “Last Refrain” and despairing “The Whisper,” the English tongue works just fine for Aguilar, the son of migrant farm workers, to convey an undocumented nomad’s gloomy outlook for this world, and frail hopes for the next.
And musically, Totimoshi significantly broadened their songwriting dynamics, softening the blow of these cynical numbers with the gentle melodies of “Dear” and acoustics of “Forever in Bone (Los Dos),” then blending hard and soft amid stops and starts on “Sound the Horn,” “The Seeing Eye” and “Little Bee.”
All this variety makes occasional shards of barbed-wire, latter-day grunge like “Fall and Bound” and the dissonant lurch of “Gnat” seem less derivative, bringing Totimoshi ever closer to establishing their own, unique style.
Call it Minority Grunge!
Or don’t call it anything, other than engaging, emotional, inspiring music that celebrates the politically disenfranchised and their sheer willpower against indomitable economics, all for to give their children a better life in a foreign, and often unwelcoming country.
Milagrosa is the kind of music that can make America great again!
More Latter-Day Alternative Rock: Alice in Chains’ Black Gives Way to Blue, Faith No More’s Sol Invictus, Foo Fighters’ Wasting Light, Gozu’s The Fury of a Patient Man, Lo-Pan's Colossus, Queens of the Stone Age’s Lullabies to Paralyze, Royal Thunder’s CVI, Snail’s Feral, Zen Guerrilla’s Shadows On the Sun.