Babasonicos

With Infame (Infamous), Babasonicos — the proud holder of six 2004 Gardel Awards, the Argentine equivalent of the Grammy — establishes itself as one of the top performers in that country and takes the crown as Argentina’s most innovative export. It is funny, though, that the altrock sextet, obsessed with showing a defiant attitude to generate passionate reactions from its audience, whether good or bad, gets through the album by faithfully following just one rule: As Adrian Rodríguez puts it near the end in “Fan de Scorpions,” “music has no moral.”

Babasonicos has no moral either. It doesn’t have one now, at the peak of its popularity, because it never had one during the seven studio albums where it jumped from hip-hop to bossa nova, and from sugary Italian-inspired ballads to gloomy heavy metal, with as many musical stops in between as it could make. The odd twist that explains its arena-size status in Argentina? Strategically embracing a few catchy but cheesy (and why not?) romantic songs stuck in Sixties melodies that once represented the Argie rockers’ worst nightmare, yet which have made the band as big as it dreamed of becoming back in 1992.