Inside Mariachi El Bronx IV, Where Love and Death Collide
The return did not arrive clean.
Within the year that Caughthran began writing, he lost several loved ones. At the same time, he got married. While the band tracked at producer John Avila’s San Gabriel Valley studio, flames licked across the hills. “We came out of the studio one night, the entire side of the hill was just on fire,” guitarist Joby J. Ford recalls.
Caughthran felt the weight of everything pressing in. “I felt a lot of pressure going into this album — love and death weighing heavily on my heart, social and political unrest everywhere, the uncertainty of the music industry, and the acceptance of the band navigating a hyper-sensitive cultural landscape. Plus, the Eaton Canyon fire burning homes and hillsides less than 15 miles away — it was overwhelming, to say the least.”
Yet, when they stepped into the studio, the chaos transformed. “For us, when we walk inside that studio, it’s a chance to channel all of that energy and create something beautiful together.” Because the members now live far apart, they built most of the record on the spot. “So it was all about coming together and making it happen — song by song, part by part, together as one.”
The songs carry that immediacy. “All Things” stretches into its longest composition, intricate and hard-won. “Songbird” materialized in under 48 hours. “Both songs are super inspired and two of my favorites on the album,” Caughthran says.
Throughout the twelve tracks, gamblers, former playboys, warriors, and lovers step forward as narrators. On “Forgive Or Forget,” Ray Suen’s violin spins a hallucinogenic tone around lyrics that trace someone “who’s completely disheveled and a little washed out, looking back on their life in a way that’s kind of hazy,” Caughthran says. “There’s a little bit of hope there, but it’s pretty dark.”
He chose fiction as a form of growth. “As a writer and a lyricist, I’ve been ‘speaking my truth’ for a long time, and honestly, it starts to feel repetitive, ego-driven, and forced after a while. It’s a total head fuck. There is growth for me in storytelling.”