Alejandro Escovedo - The Boxing Mirror (2006)

The Boxing Mirror is Alejandro Escovedo's first album in four years. On it he stands at the crossroads of his own life's work. Escovedo has always kept his music balanced on a fine line: on one side is his trademark elegant, poetic brand of sophisticated pop, and on the other is an original, tough, savvy rock & roll that encompasses not only grit but texture and dynamic while keeping its eyes on the street. On The Boxing Mirror, Escovedo and producer John Cale erase the line: rock, pop, country, Tejano, and other folk forms are woven into a rich, colorful fabric without regard for classification. His studio band is the finest he's ever assembled, and it includes guitarist Jon Dee Graham, violinist Susan Voelz, cellist Brian Standefer, primary bassist Mark Andes, drummer Hector Muñoz , Bruce Salmon on keyboards, accordionist Otoño Lujan, and guitarist David Polkingham. If ever there were an album to introduce new listeners to Escovedo's music, it's The Boxing Mirror. This one has to do it. It's rich, lush, and full of small silences and roars. The rocker "Break This Time" is a straight-out guitar scream that could have been performed by Escovedo's former band, the True Believers--if they had strings. They add to the bottom in this poignant track, as the guitars wail and shuffle with garage rock abandon and a smoking, wildly distorted six-string solo played by Graham (an amazingly gifted songwriter in his own right). Graham plays another one, as does Cale, in the album's final rock freakout, "One True Love" (written with Chris Stamey during the Man Under the Influence sessions), which closes the set. Yet this is hardly the whole story -- in fact, it's not even the beginning. Escovedo's sense of drama is in place on every track here, such as the album's moody opener, "Arizona." Keyboards open it with strange, displaced sounds that are quickly picked up by the strings and bassline. He sings "Have another drink on me/I've been empty since Arizona/I turned my back on me/And I faced the face I thought I was...." His lyric articulation in this noir-ish desert expressionist tale digs right into the middle of the instrumentation, which folds him in.