La Eda de la Violencia

Splitting time between Tijuana and Los Angeles, Ceci Bastida tasted success on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border as a teenager. At 15, Bastida was pounding on a keyboard and covering The Clash in the bristling, politically charged punk outfit Tijuana No!; then she spent her early 20s playing with beguiling bilingual alt-rock sophisticate Julieta Venegas. Bastida’s second solo album, La Edad de la Violence, is a collection of explosive, cerebral alt-pop that evinces her border-straddling background. Riding a radiant, brass-adorned parade of 8-bit synths and crackling beats, Bastida offers sugared melodies with razor-sharp lyrics, using a sweet inflection to sing about kidnappers (“Nakata”), cultural vultures and other complicated characters. She opens “El Que Decide” with a sleepy charm before launching into a declaration of empowerment over a crunchy reggaeton beat. Her only tune in English—the menacing “I Look Good in Leather”—morphs into a dissident commentary about sexual politics with sharp one-liners like “I can do anything that I want, because I look good in leather”. By the time Venegas joins with a guest vocal on the closer, “Ven (Beautiful)”, Bastida’s sophomore effort is an equally stunning and subversive artistic triumph.