There is nothing fancy about this music. A couple of guys with guitars—Hermanos Gutiererrez, playing without pretense inside subtle, almost subliminal accompaniments, making sounds that have an on-the-surface simplicity permeated by a sense of the profound.

The Ecuadorian-born, Swiss-raised Estavan Gutierrez and Alejandro Gutierrez are the brothers, los hermanos. "When Alejandro and I are playing together, it's like driving a car," says Estevan. "It's like taking a road trip." El Bueno Y El Malo is a musical road trip through the high plains, a lone rider a half mile off the highway, his hat pulled low, his collar pulled up against the chill breeze; or it is a roll through an expansive desert of endless horizons, an abandoned town in the distance, boarded up with warped wood, its walls sagging beneath a roof of sandblasted shingles; or it might be a drive along an unpopulated coast, steel-blue water on one side, a grassy rise on the other, the grass the color of a lion's coat after a long dry summer. A gusting, dry Santa Ana wind pushes a tumbleweed down the slope. It bounces across the highway, across the windshield's field of vision.

It is a perfect road trip soundtrack, bringing spaghetti westerns and