Mariachi El Bronx: “This band completed my life in a lot of ways… It’s a unique kind of world that we’ve built”

For Matt Caughthran, it comes down to just one word. It comes down to a single syllable, in fact. When referring to the iteration of the band with which he’s raised merry hell since the release of their titular debut album, in 2003, the now 46-year-old singer speaks of “The Bronx”. When discussing the group’s besuited alter-egos, however, the definitive article switches from English to Spanish.

El Bronx.

“For me, El Bronx reaches a deeper level,” is how Matt describes his feelings for the group the rest of us know as Mariachi El Bronx. “Personally, creatively, it just cuts to the core of me.” He goes on to say that he “had an El Bronx-sized hole in my heart that I didn’t know existed until we started the band.” Gosh, you think, but there’s more. “It completed my life in a lot of ways,” he says.

But they’ve been awfully quiet for an awfully long time. While The Bronx, the punk rock band with just a splash of Sunset Strip swagger, continued to operate as a full-time concern, the Latino-infused trumpets and violins of Mariachi El Bronx began to wither on the vine. As well as being 12 years since the El version of the franchise released their last album, appeared onstage, even, had shrunk to as few as one or two each year. For Matt, denying sustenance to one half of his creative muse led to an imbalanced diet deficient in crucial nutrients.

“It felt like the band was losing what made it special, which is new material and new songs,” he says. “The more you stay stagnant and tread water, the [more the] walls close in around you and creatively things start to feel stale and old. The band starts to feel like a memory a little bit.”

With the release this week of Mariachi El Bronx’s new album, though, at last, the tense has changed from past to present. As the fire and fury of The gives way to grace and melody of El, for first time in far too long, listeners can once again marvel at the unique suppleness of this split personality. That one group can so fluently bridge the distance between punk and mariachi is without precedent in rock’n’roll. It’s as remarkable as discovering that Megadeth are also the Grimethorpe Colliery Brass Band.

“I’m not in the business of tooting my own horn [but] I am very proud of what we’ve accomplished here,” Matt says. “I do think that going from The Bronx to El Bronx… is something really special and unique. I think it’s awesome.”

On a cold evening in January, Matt Caughthran beams in from the home in Los Angeles he shares with his wife. As morning sunlight casts its smile through the windowpanes of a room housing a library of records, the singer mitigates the brightness in his eyes with the aid of a black LA Dodgers cap. Two months earlier, up in Canada, an 11th inning rally against the Toronto Blue Jays in the final game of the World Series saw Matt’s beloved team secure their second title in as many years. For a city that has of late endured more than its share of misfortune, the win was much welcome.

As the group were recording their new album, up and across LA’s vast terrain, Angelinos were being burned out of their homes by wildfires. Barely six months later, on the orders of President Trump, thousands of National Guardsmen were dispatched to the city to quell unrest in the wake of raids on undocumented citizens. As it so happens, no small number of this constituency come from Mexico, the country that in the 18th century first created mariachi music.

“You can’t be a white mariachi [band], specifically, and not stand in solidarity with the Hispanic community and what’s going on right now,” Matt says. “For me personally, what’s happening in the country with regards to the immigration crackdown and people getting pulled out of their jobs and pulled out of their cars and pulled out of their communities, it’s wrong, man. It’s disgusting. It pisses me off.”

In lesser hands, the switch from The to El might carry the scent of cultural appropriation. In these heightened times, it might not do for gringos to be cosplaying as hombres. But as it has been from the start, in 2009 when the group released their first mariachi album, the vibrancy and urgency of the material and performances – Matt’s richly sonorous and soul-filled voice in particular – puts paid to even the vaguest notion of questionable intent. Here, there’s no trace of Caucasian arrivistes making money on the backs of Latino creativity.

“First off, let me stop you when it comes to making money because that’s definitely one thing we’re not doing,” cracks the singer.

The laughter stops.

“We’re very hardworking and straightforward musicians and we care about the music, we care about art, we care about culture, and we care about community,” Matt says. “And everything we do in this band reflects that. And if anyone has a problem with that, that’s cool, I get it. But for me, I know in my heart that it’s coming from a place of appreciation and not appropriation.”

Which might be why Mariachi El Bronx is a tonic for these troubled times. Without raising their voices, or being – quote-unquote – explicitly political, the triumphant joy of this band and their new album is a form of resistance in itself. After 12 long years, the most remarkable split personality in all of rock’n’roll has shifted shape once more. Their return to the field of play comes not a moment too soon.

“We want to get the music out there, get the message out there, and let people know that this is a punk rock band that is also a mariachi band,” says Matt. “It’s the same core members. They do both these things; they do both of these things well. It’s a unique kind of world that we’ve built and I just want people to know about it, man.”

Mariachi El Bronx IV is released on February 13 via ATO.

Read this next:

• The Bronx’s Matt Caughthran: The 10 songs that changed my life
• “If we were worried about being famous, we should have quit a long time ago!” Why The Bronx will never die
• The Bronx’s Matt Caughthran on punk rock, mental health and Iron Maiden