Real Animal

As Alejandro Escovedo uses *Real Animal* to trace almost 50 years of personal experiences in rock’n’roll, the album becomes a reaffirmation of his faith in the art form he fell in love with all those decades ago. A lifelong glam rock fanboy, Escovedo fulfilled a personal dream by bringing on Tony Visconti (T. Rex, David Bowie) to produce. The album is lined with references to real people, places, and events, from the Golden Bear (the Huntington Beach, California, club where Escovedo witnessed some of his first rock shows in the Sixties) to “Chip N’ Tony,” which memorializes Escovedo’s bandmates in Rank & File with an anthemic shout-out: “All I ever wanted was a four-piece band!” The album uses the guitar rock of Bowie, Mott the Hoople, and the Stooges as a touchstone, and “People (We’re Only Gonna Live So Long)” and “Real As an Animal” aren’t just the most down-and-dirty tunes of Escovedo’s career, they are some of the best straight-ahead rock’n’roll you will find in 2008. And “”Sister Lost Soul,” “Hollywood Hills,” and “Slow Down” are some of the most poignant and nostalgic works of Escovedo’s career. *Real Animal* is a life-affirming reminder of how rock’n’roll is more than a genre. It’s the book in which its disciples write their life stories.

With a couple bright smacks of guitar and a fiddle hook, "Always A Friend" announces Alejandro Escovedo's Real Animal as a sort of alt-country victory lap. (He even invites his lover to "bury my snakeskin boots somewhere I'll never find," should he wrong her.) On the whole, the album isn't drenched in sorrow and…

It may be simplistic to describe Alejandro Escovedo's 2006 album The Boxing Mirror as a record inspired by the artist's brush with death, but given the record's back story -- it was recorded as Escovedo was recovering from a near-fatal bout with Hepatitis C -- it's hard not to imagine its brave and often dazzling creative ambition was fueled by Escovedo's knowledge that these could be his last words as a musician. Two years later, a healthier and stronger Escovedo returned to the studio to record his ninth studio album, Real Animal, and by comparison this is a leaner, more tightly focused session; in fact, this is the strongest rock album Escovedo has made since his 1997 album with Buick MacKane, The Pawn Shop Years. It's easy to tag Real Animal as a less ambitious and artful collection than The Boxing Mirror, but viewed on its own merits this ranks with the best and most powerful music of Escovedo's career. Like The Boxing Mirror, which was produced by John Cale, Real Animal was recorded with a producer who worked with some of Escovedo's primal influences, Tony Visconti, and his recordings with David Bowie and T. Rex doubtless helped him connect with Escovedo the smart but swaggering rocker in a way Cale did not; this set of songs is every bit as intelligent and emotionally resonant as Escovedo's best work, but it moves with a taut energy and insistent force that informs even the quieter, acoustic oriented numbers, such as the bluesy "People (We're Only Gonna Live So Long)," and the plaintive "Hollywood Hills."

There’s a strong autobiographical bent to Real Animal, as Escovedo makes overt references to the different phases of his storied career.

It wouldn’t be fair to call Alejandro Escovedo the grandfather of alternative country, in spite of his well-known designation by No Depression magazine...