Mavericks - Trampoline CDs • Vinyl Records • LPs • Music Albums

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The fact is, with a singer like Raul Malo, the Mavericks could ingratiate themselves with an album of Slayer covers. Malo opens his trilly, operatic tenor full throttle in "To Be With You," invoking the paranoia and grandeur of Roy Orbison circa "It's Over." While there's faintly discernible irony in the Mavericks' recherché pop and vaguely Vegas-y country, it's undeniable that they really care for this stuff, buffing it to a craftsmanlike high gloss. So while they're slick, the Mavericks aren't exactly glib or schmaltzy.

For Trampoline, the band was joined by a studio-filling roll call of Nashville's finest – including horn players galore and a string session eighteen members strong – for a pop-orchestral blowout the likes of which hasn't been heard since Orbison's days on the Monument label. The Mavericks sound downright baroque on "I Hope You Want Me Too," which brings together disparate genres, decades and continents on a toetapping tune that might make the Top Forty in a more ecumenical age. Kudos to Al Anderson, late of NRBQ, whose three co-writes with Malo provide some of the disc's liveliest fluff, especially the classy-cheesy Fifties retro of "Someone Should Tell Her." Trampoline reaches its bounciest peak with "Save a Prayer," a gospel-blues breakdown that Elvis himself would have torn up in his heyday. (RS 783)

PARKE PUTERBAUGH