Invisible People finds Chicano Batman embracing a wider variety of sounds than ever—synths, electronics, and distortion abound—while retaining the spirit that has gained the group a dedicated following.
At its best, the record finds new ways to combine the group’s 60s and 70s influences with a distinctly contemporary sound. The lyrics of the title track, a paean to the “invisible people … tired of living in the dark” could make a convincing outtake from Sly & the Family Stone, if the song’s chillwave groove didn’t sound so effortlessly modern. “Everyone is trying to tear us apart / all we wanna do is heal now.” If Chicano Batman speaks for the “invisible people,” it’s with a warm, humanistic voice.
The next track, “Manuel’s Story,” is the flip side of that vision. “The other day my uncle told me a story,” it begins, embarking on a shaggy dog story involving shootouts and a thrilling escape from gunmen, like a south of the border Bond theme. But while the song’s groove is irresistibly propulsive and the plotline thrilling, it ends on a note of realism, like a splash of cold water: “That’s why I live right here, five hundred miles away,” Manuel tells the listener. The story takes on a broader resonance, that of so many others in the band’s home base of Los Angeles.
The most exciting moment on the album, with its wordplay and an equally playful sense of rhythm, is “Polymetronomic Harmony,” sounding like few things the band has recorded before. It’s the sound of a trip gone bad; a noise like a distorted airhorn rises and fades, the soft strum of a nylon guitar, and then the electronically manipulated vocals. (“Everything is fading fast / like a polymetronomic harmony / I hope this pain doesn’t last / like a polymetronomic harmony.”)
It’s a free-flowing record, recklessly genre-defying, yet somehow also tightly constructed. It zips past, with no song breaking the four-minute mark. It’s the sound of a band relentlessly moving forward—even at their most laid back.
