Alejandro Escovedo & The Sensitive Boys
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Alejandro Escovedo - Street Songs of Love
There are songwriters who sing their songs, and then there are songs who sing their writers.
Alejandro Escovedo is one with his muse and his music. Over a lifetime spent traversing the bridge between words and melody, he has ranged over an emotional depth that embraces all forms of genre and presentation, a resolute voice that weathers the emotional terrain of our lives, its celebrations and despairs, landmines and blindsides and upheavals and beckoning distractions, in search for ultimate release and the healing truth of honesty. Sometimes it takes the form of barely contained rage, the rock of punk amid kneeled feedback; sometimes it caresses and soothes, a whispery harmony riding the air of a nightclub room, removed from amplification, within the audience.
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.
Thus became Street Songs of Love.
In Alejandro's words:
"ANCHOR": was the first song I wrote for this record. I had hoped to make a record that wasn't autobiographical, but because of what was happening to me in my life personally, it became about love, and how love can be all the different colorings and changes in life: tragic love, romantic love, light love, pissed off love and angry love. I was trying to find some hope in the image of an anchor, which is not only something that weighs you down, but also prevents you from floating away.
"SILVER CLOUD": I just made that one up in rehearsal and it came out, the ever-sensual attraction of a "silver cloud with a black lace lining." All the great blues guys who like to boast about their manliness, in that one I just went for it: "I'm a hungry man…."
"THIS BED IS GETTING CROWDED": Is about all the ghosts you encounter along the way of a relationship.
"STREET SONGS": It started as trying to describe what was going around on that block where the Continental Club is, and then when I was traveling I met someone and that person became part of the song. It's a little movie.
"DOWN IN THE BOWERY": Chuck and I wrote it together, and as soon as we wrote it, we knew it was about Paris, my son, and we started to refine it with him in mind. He's seventeen, angry, young and pissed off, very quiet, loves punk rock, noise, and graffiti. It's me trying to pass the torch on, encouraging him to be his own guy.
"TENDER HEART": is Chuck and I again. We get into this thing where we start talking about songs, and in "Tender Heart" we were digging the form more than the content. We just started riffing on words – "I got a dream, do you want to be in my dream?" – and it just took off from there. I thought of it as a Raymond Carver short story in a rock song.
"AFTER THE METEOR SHOWERS": How beautiful someone is. How you can just be taken in, overwhelmed by that beauty, taken to a place where meteor showers happen, stars, and wind, and all the elements. I've had several songs that you don't know exactly what they're about, but you write them, and they take on meaning after you meet someone, or go through something. That happened with that song.
"TULA": is about Larry Brown, the writer from Oxford, Mississippi, who became a very good friend of mine. I even toured with him, playing guitar as he read. He's a great writer, really Southern, a guy who didn't start putting his thoughts on paper until late in life. He'd gone to Vietnam, come back to Oxford, became a firefighter, and then decided he wanted to write. He won the Faulkner Award, and I loved him. A long lost brother and he passed away a few years ago, so this is my salute to him.
"UNDESIRED": is a song about two people who are lucky to have found each other because nobody else wants them.
"FALL APART WITH YOU": In a way, this kind of fits with "Undesired," and reminds me of the Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick characters in Days of Wine and Roses. It's kind of tragic.
"SHELLING RAIN": is a Kim Christoff poem I put to music. I loved the imagery, and it reminded me of a sixties song, something from Spooky Tooth, or early Procol Harum.
"FAITH": is a simple expression of what you gotta have, especially if you want to keep on keepin' on.
"FORT WORTH BLUE": That's the one I wrote for Stephen Bruton. He was from Fort Worth, and it's a very peculiar town. Dallas is the big banking center, but Fort Worth is where the stockyards are. It's kind of a wild west place, and the music that comes out of there is full of crazy cats – Delbert McClinton, T Bone Burnett, the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. There's a way of playing in Ft. Worth that's really different, a weird guitar style where they're a complete rhythm section just on six strings. Stephen had this beautiful way of playing like that, and he meant so much to me. He was so important in my life. I think of him all the time.
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Amy Cook
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Austin singer-songwriter Amy Cook will release her latest full-length studio effort Let the Light In, the first album ever produced by musical luminary Alejandro Escovedo, on April 6, 2010. The record features musical contributions from Escovedo, Patty Griffin, and Tosca String Quartet as well as a composition co-written by Cook's friend and fellow Austinite Ben Kweller. This long awaited follow-up to 2007's The Sky Observers Guide demonstrates the dynamic progression of Cook's song craft as she navigates between orchestral folk, impassioned rock and roll, and organic Americana.
"Hotel Lights," the first single on Let the Light In (with backing from Patty Griffin and Tosca), is a prime example of the virtuosity of Cook's warm and emotional vocals, concise lyrics and dazzling imagery. "You'll be more than mesmerized with this absolutely beautiful song; it's perfect in its pacing and phrasing and desirous longing for wanting something you can't have…or maybe you can" says Philadelphia's WXPN, who featured the song on their highly selective Morning Download program in December.
"We had a magical time making this tune," says Cook. "It started as the foundation of the record, and Alejandro wanted to keep it sparse. We had a great time with it!"
The remainder of the tracks on Let the Light In are also a testament to Cook's incredible songwriting, vocal prowess, and ability to change moods and tempos without losing focus or taking away from the album's overall atmosphere. While the album's opener "Get it Right" is a relatable and straight ahead story about the ups and downs of relationships, "Mescaline" sends the listener on a string-laden sonic voyage a la Beck's Sea Change. "I want to break all the rules without even trying" utters Cook on the delightful ballad 'Strange Birds.' In a market saturated with singer-songwriters and tunesmiths, maybe she's on to something.
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