"Kiko and the Lavender Moon" (Los Lobos)

Mention the East Los Angeles band Los Lobos to some people, and you'll get blank stares.  Others will dig back through the dusty files in their gray matter and recall that they were the guys who remade the song "La Bamba" for the 1987 Richie Valens biopic of the same name, starring an embryonic Lou Diamond Phillips.  And then, there are others whose eyes immediately brighten and enthusiastically proclaim that Kiko (1992) is one of their favorite albums of all time.
Kiko is one of those albums that sounds of, yet outside, its time.  There's little about Mitchell Froom's production that screams "early 90s."  But at the same time, the album's eclectic mix of roots rock, jazz, psychedelia, traditional Mexican folk, blues, funk, and New Orleans-flavored R&B somehow couldn't have been birthed at any time but 1992.  (It's kind of like how The Band's Music from Big Pink couldn't have come from any year but 1968, yet sounds completely removed from 1968 at the same time.)
The centerpiece of Kiko is the track "Kiko and the Lavender Moon."  Lyrically, the song is about a mystical mischief-maker who fills the active mind of a small child with nocturnal visions of lavender moons, green shoes, haircuts, and cake as he tries to drift off to sleep.  Musically, the song is an intoxicating blend of big band jazz, Mexican folk, and psychedelic rock, with a descending horn line that drifts along like a mellow, otherworldly take on "Three Blind Mice." 
Just like the entire album, it feels fresh yet vaguely nostalgic.  But every time I attempt to figure out which time period it reminds me of, I just find myself smiling as I reminisce about how I once viewed the world from my highchair.