“Real Animal” to play Lake City Wine & Music
Though it’s over the mountains a bit, as the crow flies from Ouray far closer than driving around the mountains to get there, to catch Alejandro Escovedo at this year’s Lake City Wine & Music Festival would be nothing short of a good idea.
On Saturday in the Colorado mountain town a troubadour’s troubadour, who this year has achieved, at the age of 58, a near Springsteen-like adoration, at least from the standpoint of critics and other musicians, for his work on the new CD, “Real Animal,” which is being heralded as a glam-punk-country-opus.
How far the amps will go up in Lake City is anybody’s guess. He’s as likely to show up with a string quartet of electrified steel-pedal guitars or as just a guy with a guitar playing with his admirers. But with any luck, there will be some element of the charge delivered with “Real Animal.”
Alejandro Escovedo’s “Real Animal” lives up to its billing, title, passion and all the rest …
“Always a Friend,” is like some guideline to practical relationships in an age of social networking … sharper … “Chelsea Hotel,” faster if muddier, image-laden, darker, a specialty for Escovedo with it’s careening solos, lots of stuff rolling by about an incredulous crowd, a chorus hinting at the narcissism of the poet, and, wow, just what was that angelic riff, I mean the string instrument, for “Sister Lost Soul.”
He always turned chamber rock it a one-of-a-kind thing. You could almost say it’s his niche, as an Austin player going back to the True Believers, in the mid ’80s, when the Austin scene was just beginning to merge on the national stage. In more recent years, emerging as a dark sort. Indeed, most of his music is laced with incredible sadness.
And then comes, “Smoke,” and a heavy beat and the notice this band is sounding like the best act in America this summer
Nothing left to do, really, but to echo Jonathan Demme in the liner notes, “Thanks for the life-changing experience.”
Then Escovdeo moves throughout the album standing on the shoulders of the greats: bluesmasters, maybe Bowie, then Patti Smith … with words and words and words … so many wonderfully metered words … “Nuns Song” and “Chip N Tony” has still shows us how he’s ready to rock out like one of the unheralded road soldiers of his time … like Neil Young with Crazy Horse in “Real As An Animal.”
Or better yet, without, but still better, yet, when you want something more straight ahead without the feedback or too much buzz … and then he takes down the pace for three out of the four more songs, with a lilting, loving bone-true set of haunting melodies set to chamber electro’ he’s always been known for, when he really had you, at “Smoke.”
By Douglas McDaniel – Ouray, CO News