CD review: Alejandro Escovedo ‘Street Songs of Love’ – austin360.com
Alejandro Escovedo
‘Street Songs of Love’
(Fantasty/Concord)
Grade: A
It’s ironic that the kickoff track to Alejandro Escovedo’s new album, “Street Songs of Love,” is entitled “Anchor,” because it lifts off with the same buoyant, guitar-fueled energy that fueled the best tracks on this album’s predecessor, 2008’s “Real Animal.” Indeed, this album is a nearly seamless segue from that earlier and justifiably acclaimed effort – same producer (Tony Visconti, who has twiddled the knobs for the likes of U2 and David Bowie), same hard-charging band (mostly) and recorded in the same out-of-the-way Kentucky studio.
But whereas “Real Animal” was a semi-autobiographical tour of Escovedo’s musical incarnations, “Street Songs of Love” is an intimate look at that most malleable of emotions; love found, lost, fought for, regained and, sometimes, sought after in vain. “I feel like I am falling/And it feels okay,” Escovedo sings in the vintage-sounding, doomed-romantic ballad “Fall Apart With You,” and many of the tracks on the album survey a series of emotional peaks and valleys. “Undesired” (with it’s wonderful opening lines, “Fought in Paris/Fought in Rome/Beneath the lights of the Astrodome/Now, baby, didn’t we now?”) is a tale of two losers lucky enough to find each other.
“Silver Cloud,” whose shredded guitar contrasts with its erotic imagery (“Silver cloud with a black lace lining…”) finds the singer confessing “I’m a fool for your love” (“C’mon fool me!” he shouts.) The swaggering Lou Reed-styled “Street Songs,” with its pumping bass and finger-snapping cool vibe, is a hipster survey of romantic possibilities while “Faith” (with Bruce Springsteen lending vocals) is a nearly inarticulate howl of affirmation.
But the heart of the album may be “Down In the Bowery,” a song Escovedo (along with co-writer Chuck Prophet) penned for his son Paris, whom he describes in a press release as “17, angry, young and pissed off, very quiet, loves punk rock, noise, and graffiti…” An essay on perhaps the most enduring love of all, that between a parent and child, the song is impossibly tender, a collection of hopes, dreams and prayers that will resonate with any parent who sees in his child all that he himself might have been. Escovedo has a canon of great songs, but this one may rise to near the very top. Musically, Escovedo, Visconti and Alejandro’s great band, the Sensitive Boys, keep things straightforward on “Street Songs of Love.” Perhaps that arises from having road-tested the songs during a two-month residency at the Continental Club before the band entered the studio. At any rate, there are none of the string arrangements that Escovedo is so fond of (though complex and layered background vocals, courtesy of Karla Manzur and Nakia Reynoso replicate similar effects). Mostly he’s playing that guitar like ringing a bell, as they say, while his three bandmates track along in close formation.
From the slinky, snake-handling riff of “Tula” to the ringing, anthemic chords of “Undesired” to mournful, blues-tinged lament of the album-closing instrumental “Fort Worth Blue,” guitars play in counterpoint to Escovedo’s lyrical essays on love’s permutations. The net result is two halves of one heart, beating in tandem. On Street Songs of Love, that heart is beating strong.
By John T. Davis – austin360.com