|
|
Alejandro Escovedo w/Tim Easton at Lilli's, Somerville, MA, May 13May 16 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
Popular Products in Music
The Bottom Line Why isn't he famous? Alejandro Escovedo is a man people need to go see live, as he tours small clubs playing his folkish alt-country cowpunk rock WHATEVER....music!
Alejandro Escovedo is an alt-country artist from Austin, Texas, standing at the extreme alternative end of the spectrum, who's been working with a variety of bands since the late '70s. His early career included events such as playing in the Nuns, a San Francisco punk band that opened at the final Sex Pistols show, and founding bands like Rank and File and the True Believers (but if those names mean much to you, you probably already know a lot about Alejandro Escovedo). In the early '90s, after none of the band he was in really panned out, due to a series of problems with record labels, band-mates and the moronic audiences that prevail these days, he put out his first album under his own name, though it was far from an individual undertaking. He works with a rotating cast of musicians, and there's a lot of diversity amidst them; as an artist that spans genres, his songs have included classical string sections, a variety of percussion, pedal steel guitar, trumpets, keyboards, sampling, and of course, some rocking guitar. While he's achieved a sort of fame, it's not the sort that brings audiences or mass recognition; No Depression magazine, a Bible to people like my dad, named him their artist of the 90s, and his releases on indie labels like Rykodisc and (currently) Bloodshot are univerally well-reviewed, but his tours are typically him and whoever he can afford to bring along with him, traveling in a van, hitting bars/clubs around the country. In this case, the bar was Lilli's, a surprisingly nice place considering that it's in Somerville (geeeee-to). The light was soft and nice, the place was clean, and the crowd was out to have a good time, but not drunkenly out of control. They seemed to be pretty evenly divided between hardcore Alejandro devotees, friends of the first group, and people who would do anything if it involved going out, drinking, moving around, and experiencing a taste of Culture as well. Opening the show was Tim Easton, accompanied only by a stand-up bass player who seemed thrilled that he had moved from being beaten up by the jocks in high school to being up on stage and appreciated. Seriously, he looked 16; he was, however, an able player, and the crowd loved him. Easton was clearly very much under the influence of artists like Bob Dylan and Peter Case, with the strapped-on harmonica, folksy guitar-playing, and classic material. His set was good, in spite of a few sound problems, but nothing incredible. And so the review comes to the show in question. Alejandro came to Boston with a five-piece band: himself on lead vocals and guitar, his old friend Hector Munoz on drums, a bass player who covered some guitar parts and backing vocals, another guy on pedal steel guitar or trumpet, and a man in the back for keyboards and samples. It takes this kind of lineup to do justice to a lot of his songs, and it would have been even better with the addition of a cello player (as he has done in the past). Still, this was a good line-up, and Alejandro was clearly happy to have them with him, just as they were happy to be along with such a great artist. Alejandro is touring in support of his new album, A Man Under the Influence, so he opened with "Wave", the excellent opening track from that disc. "Wave" is a song about immigration and family, themes that Alejandro, the son of immigrants, includes in a lot of his music. As soon as he started singing, though this isn't one of the older songs that I'm familiar with and love, I knew it was going to be a good show, and that his live talent surpasses even what he does on his albums. It got even better though, when he merged the end of "Wave" right into "Five Hearts Breaking", an older song that's one of my favorites. The amazing thing about Alejandro is his versatility; he's got ties to country, alternative, punk, Mexican music, and the American folk singer-songwriter tradition. "Wave" pulls this together in one way, for a sort of Mexican-American folk ballad, while "Five Hearts Breaking" can really be interpreted according to what his mood is on any given day; before the show, I'd heard a lush version with a near-orchestra sound, and a stripped-down take focused on Alejandro's voice, but with a violin solo and some hard riffs on the guitar. This concert brought a performance somewhere in the middle, with the guitars, drums and keyboards all coming in together in a few places, but Alejandro's voice nearly standing alone together at other times. After this lengthy introductory portion, Alejandro took some time to talk about the members of his band and what they wanted to do that night. He mostly does a good job working with the audience, though the embittered Yankee crowd was not down with the later attempt at a sing-along. I don't have an exact set list, but one of the better moments of the night came early in the show, when he played "Castanets", a song off his new album that I heard a while back on an Oxford American sampler. The song is a simple description, not even really a narrative, of a girl who the singer loves a lot (with verses like "I love her hair fall across my face") but likes better when she's not around ("I like her better when she walks away" is the chorus). He wove a hilariously ironic tale in his introduction: "This is the story of an a-rhythmic girl who insists on playing the castanets, and a band that stops by her roadside store and falls madly in love with her, and they have lots of beautiful children together and live happily ever after", except longer and funnier than I can remember. The song itself is the most rocking song on the new album, with a strutting, powerful electric guitar part, that holds just enough Southern twang to remind you where he comes from. It lends itself to live performance, specifically with the current line-up, and got even this staid crowd moving. Another excellent song was "Everybody Loves Me", probably the hardest, punkest aspect of Alejandro's repertoire, with the possible exception of his cover of The Stooges "I Wanna Be Your Dog" (yes, he really does share a broad genre and a fan base with Townes Van Zandt and Lucinda Williams), which he unfortunately couldn't find space for in this performance. "Everybody Loves Me" features the screamed chorus "Everybody loves me/But I don't know why", and guitars that transformed the evening into a rock show for a few minutes, but not in the same vein as the dumb mook rock that fills the radio. Alejandro marries some thrashing guitar rock to intelligent sensibilities and a real understanding of song-writing, and he contrasts it with gorgeous love songs like "Rosalie" (another good performance from this night) and "Broken Bottle" (one of my favorites that I didn't get to hear). One of the few weaker moments in the show was a song that I believe is called "Sad and Dreamy", which Alejandro only plays live, as it's really too silly to hold up on an album. It was written as part of a workshop with elementary school students, so the words are theirs, and while Alejandro's story of this process was interesting, the song just wasn't that great. He tried to make the stodgy old crowd sing along with the chorus, something like "I hit the big one-oh/I feel so old/Candy just doesn't taste so good anymore". It wasn't happening. He made a crack about it being even more of a failure in New York, but you're really not going to be succesful if you're trying to get Bostonians to sing along like that. All-in-all though, there were few mis-steps in Alejandro's set. He hit most of the better songs from his new album; in addition to the ones mentioned above, he did "Rhapsody" (the hit single that won't do as well as it deserves) and "Velvet Guitar" ("a song about guitars", he said). He also did a lot of the older material that the fans wanted to hear, so it was a well-balanced show. The closer, save for the encore, was "All About this Love", which is an excellent summary: "It's all about this love/it's all about this pain/it's all about the way/we break, to love again". Alejandro can be be pretty down-beat, but I was smiling watching him, because he's a beautiful performer, and he's aware in his music that renewal follows any loss. The crowd loved the show, and of course wanted to hear him play all night, since there is so much great material in Alejandro's catalog, so he came back out by himself to do "I Wish I Was Your Mother", a soft, sad song, then brought the whole band out to play "Sacramento and Polk", a noise-fest about living in transient houses in California. There was lots more I wanted to hear, songs like "Falling Down Again", "Broken Bottle" and "Irene Wilde", but it's tough to fit all his good songs into a set. I'll be writing reviews of Alejandro's albums once I get around to listening to them enough to do it right, as I just got them from my dad, after listening to mp3s for a while. For now, I recommend going to see Alejandro Escovedo if he's coming to your town, as he's a great performer with a good band behind him and some fantastic songs. To hear some of his music, check out More Miles than Money, a live album from a few years back, or the new album, A Man Under the Influence.  |
| Read all comments (1)|Write your own comment |
|
Ads by Google
|
by kiwifella
![Jersey Boys [Original Broadway Cast Recording] by Original Broadway Cast Reviews](http://di2.shopping.com/images/pi/95/a4/8a/2006752046-100x100-0-0.jpg?p=p5.2e80eedfb42151a5f469&a=2&c=1&l=8071320&t=120604005721&r=2)
![Irony Is a Dead Scene [EP] by The Dillinger Escape Plan Reviews](http://di1.shopping.com/images/pi/6b/71/9f/2005398205-100x100-0-0.jpg?p=p10.42534124b7b581e0a57f&a=2&c=1&l=8071320&t=120604005722&r=4)