Alejandro Escovedo

A Life in the Tower of Song

originally published October 22, 2008

Looking back on all the songs - and more troubling things - that have passed through his blood and bones over the last 33 years, Alejandro Escovedo seems more haunted than celebratory. "It's like an infected thing that happens - kind of like a sentence sometimes, you know?" says the Austin-based songwriter. He bemusedly quotes the lyrics to "The Ballad of Mott the Hoople:" "I changed my name in search of fame to find the Midas touch/I wish I hadn't wanted then what I want now, twice as much."

Winning a long near-fatal battle with Hepatitis-C earlier this decade, the 57-year-old Escovedo just keeps getting better, musically as well as physically; his two most recent albums offer a strong case for wanting Escovedo now, twice as much.

The Boxing Mirror, produced by John Cale, was a gorgeous, artfully dark affair. The 2006 album detailed Escovedo's return after his illness, and that costly victory informs the haunting opener, "Arizona." Some have called it the best introduction to Escovedo's work - a sentiment that seldom accompanies a musician's ninth solo album.

This past summer he released Real Animal, which opens with the exhortation, "Every once in a while, honey, let yourself go/Every once in a while, honey, let your love show" - a bracing sea change. "I wanted to get away from that more somber kind of stuff I was doing on The Boxing Mirror," Escovedo says. "I co-wrote this with Chuck Prophet, which probably has to do with why it's so guitar-oriented - he and I were both in guitar bands." Long inspired by the Stooges, Mott the Hoople, David Bowie and T-Rex, Escovedo brought in the legendary Tony Visconti, who produced many of those records.

The main influence on Real Animal, though, is Alejandro - or at least, his various musical incarnations over the past 33 years. Real Animal attempts to chronicle his musical history, which includes stints in punk band The Nuns, cowpunks Rank and File, the alt-country True Believers (alongside brother Javier) and rockers Buick MacKane. "I wanted to tell the story about all the bands I've been in," he says, "and a lot of the personnel in those bands, and characters I've met along the way and some of the people on the records that inspired me to want to be in those bands. So it's like a musical memoir."

That internal structure informs the stylized treatment of individual songs. "'Nuns Song' is definitely in the style we used to write in," Escovedo says, while "Real as an Animal" and "Smoke" pack serious garage-rock heat. Highlights include the eerie "Golden Bear," with its echoes of Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes;" Escovedo describes it as a meditation on "this creature that's in my body, and is the creature music, or is the creature a disease? Or are they both the same thing?" "Sensitive Boys" tells of looking after his younger brother in True Believers, a nostalgic "innocents abroad" story backed by cinematic strings and reminiscent of Lou Reed's "Coney Island Baby."

The wide palette of sounds makes for a multidimensional, immensely satisfying listen - critic Dave Marsh recently hailed Real Animal as "not only Alejandro Escovedo's best album, but the best album anybody has made this year."

But isn't Alejandro Escovedo supposed to be an alt-country poster-boy?

True, Escovedo was named Artist of the Decade by No Depression in 1998, and he can rattle off a lineage of country's outlaw greats. But country, for Escovedo, seems more about attitude than a weepy pedal steel. "I was born in San Antonio, TX, and my father was a big country-western fan at that time," he says, "but I've always loved rock and roll. I think other people assume that I'm a country-western artist or a country artist or country-oriented artist, but if you listen to the records, they're not country at all."

The country-tinged heartache is still present, however, in songs like "Sister Lost Soul," the cry of a man wandering a frozen wilderness of numbed emotions, yearning for transcendence in the company of the similarly damaged:

I long to lay down beside you

Feel your breath in my ear

You're not the first or last I've lied to

I'm lying to myself right now, you're still here.

"Sister Lost Soul" is a highlight of his recent live shows, in which Escovedo is often backed by a raucous four-piece band plus a string section. Within the space of a set, he can go from gripping the mic for the scorching "Real as an Animal" to spinning near-mythic tales of his father coming to America, from his dramatic work By the Hand of the Father. If you've never caught his act before, live Escovedo is a revelation - but you might want to wear some old jeans to the rock club: Alejandro just might bring you to your knees.

Aaron Jentzen

WHAT: Alejandro Escovedo, Magnolia Electric Co., The Satin Peaches
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Friday, Oct. 24
HOW MUCH: $15 (advance)