I stayed up a little too late last
night and drank a little too much. This led to sleeping in a little too late,
but I think I have just enough time to get this review written before I settle
in for an afternoon of NFL football.
Disc 957 is….A Man Under the Influence
Artist: Alejandro
Escovedo
Year of Release: 2001
What’s up with the Cover? Last minute Halloween costume?
This mask looks bent up at the bottom, probably because the wearer realized
halfway through the evening he couldn’t both wear the mask and drink. You can’t
very well be a man under the influence if your mask gets in the way of your
drinkin’ hole!
How I Came To Know It: I had a chance to see Alejandro
Escovedo when he came to Victoria a couple years ago and didn’t take it.
Stupid! However, I did check out his music online and liked what I heard. Since
then I’ve been drilling through his collection. “A Man Under the Influence” is
my most recent acquisition.
How It Stacks Up: Escovedo has 13 studio albums and while I have
been hitting that back catalogue pretty hard, I only have five. I don’t know
any of them that well yet, so it is hard to compare them. However, based on
limited knowledge I’ll put “A Man Under the Influence” in at second or third
best, dependent on how I end up feeling about the others when I review them..
Ratings: 3 stars but almost 4
“A Man
Under the Influence” is a hard record to categorize. It has its feet firmly
planted in rock and roll, it has elements of folk, flamenco and country
sprinkled through it as well.
Mostly,
this is a record that evokes a romantic mood, with lush and layered production,
understated guitar played with grace and ease, and Escovedo’s plaintive vocals.
Escovedo’s
vocals sound a lot like Greg Keelor, and many of the songs could fit easily on
a Blue Rodeo album from the same era. He won’t blow the roof of a vocal
performance, but the songs are written to land well within his range, and he
has the right tone for the subject matter.
That
subject matter is very often about love, whether that love is fading or
blooming; sustaining someone, or dragging them down. It is a subject that is
often visited, but Escovedo is determined to examine it from every angle before
he’s through.
On “Across the River” Escovedo opts for a
stripped down guitar and while I’m never sure of the answer to Escovedo’s
question “What kind of love/destroys a
mother/and sends her crashing through the tangled trees?” we can feel that
it must be terrifying indeed. “Across the River” is a good example of
Escovedo’s storytelling approach, which is dreamlike and non-linear. It is a
set of images cycling around one another that leaves you more with an
impression than a complete narrative.
Escovedo
can be playful as well, as he is on “Castanets”
which is a song of love for that dangerous girl you just can’t resist, who is every
bit as fiery as the one in Cake’s “Short
Skirt, Long Jacket”. Best line is the refrain of “I like her better when she walks away.”
Escovedo
has a great range on his guitar playing, and delivers folksy acoustic strumming
and full on electric rock solos with equal skill. His throaty vocals match both
styles and help hold the record together, which benefits from being a
restrained 12 songs in length.
He also
employs a string section to good effect, and I think I heard both cello and
violin at various times, adding texture and emotional underpinning to the
songs.
“Wedding Day” is one of those perfect ‘first
dance’ songs, and had me thinking happy thoughts about my own wedding day, and
that perfect moment when you first see your girl in that dress. That image
never leaves you, but it was nice of Escovedo to remind me. A song like “Wedding Day” could easily become sappy, but
Escovedo navigates the territory with grace and an honest delivery that holds
everything together.
While
some songs are more memorable than others, “A Man Under the Influence” doesn’t
have any obvious blunders, and plenty of standouts. It is a lush record with a good
understanding of how to layer in different instruments to create layered
landscapes of music that match well with the emotional snapshots created by Escovedo’s lyrics.
Best
tracks: Across
the River, Castanets, Don’t Need You, Follow You Down, Wedding Day
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