Kevin Bronson on May 4th, 2011

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Carlos Michael Gutierrez hails from Harbor City Gateway, works as a longshoreman in San Pedro, skates and likes to spend idle time “driving through my area’s gang neighborhoods to translate the graffiti. They are communicating to each other in code.” The songs on “Golden Ghosts,” the debut album from CMG & We Are the Night, have the same mission, he points out: “I’m trying to communicate with you in code with the stuff I write. Just so you know what’s really going on around here.” Gutierrez’s catchy compositions and their blue-collar narratives rank high on the authenticity scale, and his album, produced by David J. (ex-Kind of Like Spitting), features contributions from Michael Rozon Paul Kaloper, Jeff Roffredo, Naim Amor, Daniel Ahearn, Mindy Gaspar, Moses Hernandez, Carrie Sweet and Vicki Brown. As for his Springsteen reverie “Who’s the Boss,” it’d bring a smile to faces of the E Streeters.

||| Download: “Who’s the Boss”

||| Stream: The whole album.