Más Broncos Que Nunca / Mas Broncos Que Nunca

From a marketing perspective, Bronco have enjoyed an enviable position in regional Mexican music. They have enough pop/crossover sensibilities to capture the attention of the grupero crowd, but they also have enough grit, down-home earnestness, and ranchera appeal to be considered a legitimate norteño group (as opposed to simply a group that offers nothing but Latin pop with norteño overtones). It's a balance that Bronco have been favoring since the '80s, and a balance that continues to work to their artistic advantage on 2007's Más Broncos Que Nunca. This 38-minute CD is not designed with norteño purists in mind; a group of norteño purists would not want the amount of Latin pop gloss that Bronco bring to crossover-minded tracks such as "Amor y Deseo" and the gentle ballad "No Puedo Ser." And yet, Bronco's ranchera credentials are alive and well on "Casa de Vidrio" and "Cruz de Olvido," which are among the disc's straight-ahead norteño offerings. Meanwhile, "Ladrón" and "La Cumbia del Campeón" are reminders of what Bronco have to offer from a cumbia standpoint. But despite sharing the cumbia element, those are two very different tracks. "Ladrón" has more of a Tex-Mex approach to cumbia — in other words, it is exactly how one expects a Mexican norteño group to approach cumbia — whereas "La Cumbia del Campeón" is played in a minor key and has the sort of moodiness that is not uncommon in cumbia recordings from Colombia (where cumbia originated), Peru, Bolivia, and other South American countries. Más Broncos Que Nunca is an enjoyable and fairly diverse effort that reaffirms Bronco's position as the middleweight champions of norteño.