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Chicano Batman are an L.A. four-piece who have been welding psychedelic soul to funk, tropicalia, cumbia, and early-70s Latin balladry since 2008, and on Notebook Fantasy they let producer John Congleton open the windows. It is their fifth record, brighter and more spacious than the moody, political Invisible People, the sound of a band that has played the Hollywood Bowl deciding to paint in primary colors.
We go back with this band. They lit up Levitation 2021, then came back for Austin Psych Fest 2024, and seeing them stretch out twice on our stages is exactly why we wanted this one on wax. Pressing it as a Levitation Edition felt less like a pickup and more like keeping a conversation going.
The Congleton move pays off immediately. Where older Chicano Batman records pile retro textures on top of each other, Notebook Fantasy leaves air around everything, and the rhythm section gets room to actually groove instead of just hold things together. Fly is the tell: airy, prismatic, the kind of song that earns the "painting in primary colors" line they kept repeating.
FLOOD Magazine clocked the same shift, calling it a step beyond the band's cluttered usual and somewhere brighter than Invisible People let on, and we agree the production is the story here. Our one honest gripe: the new spaciousness occasionally sands down the grit that made the early stuff hit, and a couple of cuts drift toward pretty without quite landing a hook.
None of that dents the case for vinyl. This is a band hearing itself clearly for the first time, and that aqua blue and pink and blue splatter pressing, limited to 300, is the version of Notebook Fantasy we want spinning. Reverent, alive, and built to be played loud.
Recommended if you like: The Black Angels, Frankie and the Witch Fingers, La Luz.
