Alejandro Escovedo - American musician

Here I look at the music of Alejandro Escovedo, a superb songwriter and one of the most important alt-country artists.

The trajectory of Alejandro Escovedo’s solo career has, so far, taken the appearance of a mountain with no downwards path, or a crescendo which maintains top volume indefinitely. Cut off – temporarily but for no small amount of time – by serious illness, Escovedo’s recording career was halted after he had made two records of seemingly insurmountable power, quality and feeling – the first perhaps more soulful and personal, the second probably a fuller realisation of the sound he had been striving for. With the quality of his songwriting, the maturity of his sound, and the diverse influences he reflects, his music reflects what it is to be a true and perfectly formed American musician.

By the turn of the 21st century, Alejandro Escovedo had become a master of what might best be called the ‘epic ballad’. Conventionally we are used to ‘epic’ songs being long affairs, with majestic lyrics talking of grand ideas complemented by overstated guitar solos and a dense sound. What is this all in the name of? Power. Ultimately, Escovedo has shown us that there are more interesting ways to make powerful music. But in the meantime, he has spent a great deal of time – and vinyl – perfecting this art.

Right from Paradise, the opening song on his 1992 album Gravity, it is clear that Escovedo is searching for that particular combination of the grand and the delicate, the broad and the personal. Often on his early albums, he takes a fairly meaningful set of lyrics – about home, family or history - adds in a folk or country instrumental feel, and then finally plasters on that 70s grandeur: piano, a big (in sound if not in terms of size) band, brazenly portentous chords. He is, after all, a big fan of Ian Hunter and Mott the Hoople, and you can tell. But he isn’t an imitator – his aim is to harness that big sound to his own, more introspective, ends:

Did you hear the bells a ringing
Or was that just in my head
Thought I heard the angels singing
Their wings brush across my face

There is no big idea here – this is Alejandro Escovedo’s life. First of all an acoustic guitar introduces the song’s riff; next, the singer himself begins to tell his tale; and then one by one the piano, basic drum beat and electric band enter the fray. It doesn’t sound bad – there is a natural progression to the song – but the layerered approach is somewhat crude. Time and again, on both Gravity and its successor Thirteen Years (1993), Escovedo takes a similar approach – sometimes obviously, occasionally more cohesively, and often at the expense of bothering with, or maybe finding space for, an original melody. All of this is in the name of trying (too hard?) to create a comfortable vehicle for his message: that the most intimate sentiments, the most personal of songs, can contain within them the biggest ideas of all.

In the meantime, the songs where Escovedo is less ambitious (musically, not lyrically) are much more satisfying and revealing. With its prominent country-tinged pedal steel, and the initial string sounds that would become such a feature of the Escovedo sound later on, Broken Bottle is a poignant ballad. The imagery around the title lyrics are so complete that you can forgive “J’aime mon amour / J’aime mon amour / Fools for love in every language”:

So pour me a drink from a broken bottle
And fill my glass with dirty water
What I’ve lost is gone
What I’ve gained has no name
And I’ll take my leave once more

Equally rounded – and also downright enjoyable – are the full-on rockers on his early albums. Thanks to his earlier career in the True Believers, Escovedo is well experienced with bringing the house down, and his albums are littered with real bar-room stuff – loose, carefree and containing equal measures of roll and rock. There is a secondary joy within Escovedo’s frequent switches to rocker mode: the depth and significance of his lyrics remain intact; they don’t disappear along with their more natural companions, the ballad, the string section and the pedal steel. Any songwriter will tell you, retaining your ’seriousness’ when writing up-tempo songs can be very difficult. Escovedo pulls it off by lightening his lyrics slightly, anticipating and adjusting for the brighter mood which will inevitably come with the faster song. So while early gems like Five Hearts Breaking and Last To Know contain the most transparent and solemn keys to his thoughts, a less wistful side to the narrator is shown in rockers like One More Time and Mountain of Mud.

Whatever kind of song Escovedo is singing, the expression and coherence of the music are emphasised (in the case of his better songs) and saved (in his more imperfect numbers) by his voice. Often within the same song, Escovedo will sound broken and yet healed, firm but still plaintive, and tender while still stoical. In Last to Know, he pulls the listener in two distinct directions – the words of the refrain make you want to cry out for the aching pain the narrator must be feeling; but the finesse with which he sings the lines make you want to break into a smile in recognition of the vocal qualities he displays. When he sings “More miles than money / Look at our lives and it’s so funny” it is as if he has summed up what his music is all about – not accepting his poor lot in life, not making an unconvincing martyred claim that “life is bad, but hey, we should be thankful for whatever we have”, but writing and performing the songs just as a way of sharing – and maybe, on occasion, healing. The lyrics alone do not communicate this message – they need the versatility and magic of Escovedo’s voice to get across the full breadth of his feelings.

Five Hearts Breaking suffers from more than one of the flaws of his earlier work: re-hashed instrumental riffs and the absence of much melodic variety. But again, his voice is wonderfully expansive, telling the story so convincingly that surely, surely, every word is true. The lyrics are indicative of the general direction of much of his work:

Her eyes are taken from the stars above
Her voice is five hearts breaking
Her voice is five hearts breaking

Escovedo demonstrates here his ability to show belief in some sort of destiny. It is doubtful that his sense of fate is based ultimately or solely on any religious faith – in Gravity, for example, he sings “No angels hanging from the ceiling can save you”, and in doing so he echoes a common theme in alt-country and other, recent, music to come out of the South: the use of religion as a crutch, a comfort and an imperfect belief system – one that does not provide all the answers. The usual questions regarding why God allows such a flawed world are never put, not because to do so would be blasphemous, but because the harsh reality lying behind those questions is now taken as read by the likes of Steve Earle, Jim White and Alejandro Escovedo. For them, it is far more interesting to move on from that basic point and write songs in and around the uncertainty that remains. It is clear that Escovedo does not see his sense of destiny as completely pre-determined, but nonetheless there is a sense of some sort of spiritual faith in his work. But this belief is never at the expense of a more personal love, which is at once more materialistic and more human, and whose exposition is just as poetic.

One other musical feature of Escovedo’s earlier albums that marks him out as different from his Americana contemporaries is his use of string sections – not the fact that he uses violins, violas and cellos, but the way he uses them: complete string sections as an independent and leading voice in his ensemble. On Thirteen Years, Escovedo still seems to be trying to reach that perfect marriage of the epic sound with the song in ballad form. The strings are a lot more prominent on Thirteen Years than they had been on his earlier material, and the strings perform as one unit – they are well to the fore of the sound, introducing the riffs and themes on many songs and leading the rest of the band. The result is far removed from strings’ more traditional role in popular music, with a small number of instruments present just to add colour: on this album, the sound is approaching the orchestral. On Try, Try, Try, the strings dominate an ensemble which otherwise consists of just an acoustic guitar and a bit of bass, as Escovedo attempts to find a suitable accompaniment for his bid to break away from faith and solve his problems without appeal to a higher power:

Lock away all your saints
Cos I’m gonna get it right

It is easy to be critical of the imperfections of albums like Gravity and Thirteen Years; for all of the flashes of brilliance that both contain, they do contain flaws – that is inevitable when the project being attempted is so ambitious. But on With These Hands (1996), Alejandro Escovedo finally realised what I have termed the epic ballad – a seamless, coherent and organic marriage of the most intimate and heartfelt stories with an appropriately majestic musical setting. While his earlier work sounds at times like he has plastered various ideas together, on With These Hands, Escovedo is the master of everything he attempts.

A classic case in point is the album’s emotional centre-piece, Pissed Off 2am. Normal song classification would have this number down as a ballad. As with most ballads, it has subject matter which is sad, it is slow-paced, it has sweet but not cloying harmonies, and it is full of the language of loss, drink, and lack of meaning. It touches the listener, and creates a visual image – the two protagonists are there, right in front of you, you feel like you know everything there is to know about their story, you share the singer’s despair…ultimately you begin to identify with him, however silly and inappropriate this is. But this song has something else – it has a subtle but clearly present force, which drives the song in a way which sets it apart from most ballads. It is difficult to pin down exactly how Escovedo achieves this. As with all good epics, there is a piano – but it isn’t the ostentatious plonking he has previously employed, it is more a series of delicate whispers, just in the right place, adding to the melody rather than disguising the lack of one. The lyrics also play their part in creating such a unique song – they are not the simple platitudes of loss, but something far more complex. Escovedo doesn’t just have to fight the reasons given to him for the changes in his life – there are also “barricades”, real obstacles, which he tries to knock down merely by denying their meaning. But the barricades appear again and again in the song, and the story remains unfinished, the suffering unresolved.

Why don’t you sleep?
You look as though you need it
The barricades and reasons
They mean nothing to me
Now they mean nothing to me

That, in fact, is the theme of the album – a yearning for times past, a realisation that times have changed in irreversible ways, and, at times, an uncertain hope that things will be happy in new ways. The initial rumblings and catchy bass riff of the opening song, Put You Down, give way to a description of a love that the singer just cannot relinquish, and then we are away – eleven songs of what might be called ‘Americana’ music if only because that term means so little and encompasses so much. Acoustic folk, rustic country, Latino, rock and roll…actually that last term may be sufficient on its own. The Band’s film The Last Waltz contains a revealing interview with Levon Helm, in which he describes how lots of different musical genres come together in Tennessee, as it is geographically the heart of the United States. The result? “Rock and roll”. Escovedo’s album is a classic exposition of this fusion. The song which sounds most like a rock and roll song is probably Guilty. Unlike most of the songs on the album, it is not in the first or second person – it tells a story of someone else, a man who has lost his way and is wrapped up in shame. But this is not just a token loud, pull-out-all-the-stops, rocker. It has a superb hook – that moment in the chorus where the lyrics are perfectly matched by the melody, and where the band comes together and feels the movement, the change, in the song.

Towards the end of the album, there is another song which successfully combines the epic feel with the ballad form, and this time the power of the song is more easily identifiable. The theme of loss and renewal is poetically exposed at the outset:

Take this old and very tired skin
Wrap up a newborn baby and keep her warm

Judged on paper, the words have the potential to sound trite, but with the warmth and sincerity of the vocals, the song sounds natural and almost unassuming. The ability of music itself to rejuvenate is also recognised:

Take this old and worn out violin and hold it in your arms
And make it sing

By the time we reach the album’s title track, the record is almost complete – this is a song Escovedo wrote for his father, and the life of this brilliant but only moderately successful songwriter is put into tragic context:

They say death’s the only peace the poor understand

The song builds in intensity as it re-acquaints us with the restless growls of the opening number, and we see the light, it moves “faster, howling like the wind blows”…and the singer tells us that the water of the river will heal our wounds – because once again, although the song is not about us, we feel what he is saying. Finally, the album draws to a close and we are reminded that it contains no clear message, just some themes which point the songs in particular directions – because over some more fantastically shimmering piano work, Tugboat ends by reminding us that “Gone gone those days are gone / gone gone gone”. With Escovedo now seriously ill with hepatitis C, these thoughts move beyond being simply poignant and assume the weight of real tragedy.

So With These Hands is an album to be enjoyed by those who like good quality songs and near-perfect performance. The depth of soul on display is practically unsurpassed by any songwriter anywhere, and the articulation given to Escovedo’s emotions by the arrangements and by his own voice is simply brilliant. His challenge, then, was to follow it up with an album of equal quality but different enough to enable more originality of expression. Remarkably, with A Man Under the Influence (2001), he achieved just that – and, if anything, created an even better sound.

A Man Under the Influence is less unified, less realised and less varied than With These Hands, but in its way it is no less outstanding. With These Hands is the album where he takes everything – the stories, the sentiments, the sound – to the limit, and A Man Under the Influence is a record cut from a different mould – it is certainly more accessible. Indeed, it is probably fair to say that A Man Under the Influence is the more commercial of the two albums. In the songs where he reaches for the emotional extremes, the zeniths and nadirs of his feelings, Escovedo’s overall sound is more rounded, and more familiar from track to track. The core band on this album is pretty consistent – an acoustic guitar, a string ensemble (but used in a different, more subtle, manner), and electric guitar solos which are frequent and yet, in the main, unobtrusive. With These Hands is a more diverse record – for instance when it is time for a country song, Escovedo doesn’t do things by halves: he recruits Willie Nelson to sing and play guitar on the gorgeously poignant family history of Nickel and a Spoon. And crucially, the sound varies in keeping with the shifting emotions. In this sense it takes the listener with it: you ache when Escovedo aches, you laugh when he laughs, and you’re optimistic when he is. With A Man Under the Influence, Escovedo obtains a sound – possibly his best sound yet – and he sticks with it.

Inevitably, the result of all this is that the music fits Escovedo’s sentiments more accurately in some songs than in others. The album’s opening tracks are near-perfect in this respect, and they set an example that the rest of the songs find it a bit difficult to follow. First up is Wave, which is best described as a desert song. Unlike most of his writing, the tale here is broad. The title of the song is mysterious, as he uses the verb of his opening phrase, “wave goodbye”, instead of the more obvious farewell. But as the song unfolds, using the best elements of seventies canyon music while retaining that Escovedo mark, you are transported into the world of the narrator, a world which encompasses an emotional landscape as large as the geographical one being conveyed:

Wave goodbye, everybody waves goodbye
Climb aboard the train
Turn and wave goodbye again
Some go north
Some go south
Maybe east, some left out
Some are rich
Some are poor
But everybody’s got to wave

Wave defines a broad canvass in which the rest of the album’s songs, the more local and personal stories, can find a home. The next two songs fit right in. Rosalie and Rhapsody are of a piece, but not much less distinct for that. The former is a simply-worded (by Escovedo’s standards) love song, and it is the first indication that he has really managed to bring together and gel all of the instrumental aspects he has toyed with on previous records. The acoustic guitar provides the typical base for an Escovedo love song, and on A Man Under the Influence they also come forward more, taking little solos, inter-weaving with the pedal steel, and providing a distinct country edge to the album. The strings also play their role, but rather than taking over the band and converting it into a baroque ensemble, the strings are finally used in a more complementary manner – often we hear just a cello on its own, sometimes supplemented with a violin, adding dashes of colour. This works a lot better. Finally, the use of electric guitar solos sits well with the acoustic and strings: there are many solos on the album, but they are only ever employed when the sound of the song demands it. This kind of sound is the essence of alt-country. There is a definite country basis, emanating from both the choice of instruments and, in a more mysterious manner, the mood in which they are used. On top of that, alternative touches are added – again, the choice of instrument is relevant here, but their mode of use is equally important to finding that ‘alternative’ feel – for example the use of the cello as a richly sonorous instrument underneath the vocal, as opposed to the more common use of strings, either as part of a larger ensemble or as a solo, country-style melodic messenger.

Rhapsody is a similar song: the ensemble sounds like its members have been playing together all their lives, and for the moment the music appears to fit the sentiments, too. The presence of a strong melody helps, as Escovedo produces one of his finest expositions of the poignant retrospective love song. Using two musical terms – the everyday “melody” and the exceptional “rhapsody” – as hooks, he goes back to a point well-established in the book of Escovedo: we’re all searching for perfection, and if you can’t find one, no, it’s not okay – but whatever you have for now will have to do. But keep looking. He emphasises that last point with the closing bars of the song. After the slightest of pauses, an acoustic guitar solo, its entry dramatic, its execution delicate, plays the song out.

But however good the band sounds, it is destined not to hit the right mood for every single song, and Don’t Need You is a case in point. This is still a very good song, with an impressive sound and strong lyrics. But the two don’t quite match up. It is one of the album’s most majestic tracks: that solo cello and the acoustic guitar lead the way, interspersed with electric guitar breaks, and the overall effect is dense – there is little room for more. But the words of the song are so bleak. The repeated message is blunt:

I don’t need you
I don’t need you
I don’t need you
Like you don’t need me

This is a big statement. But as he sings it, his voice falters ever so slightly: is it deliberate? Does he mean it or is he just saying, we do need each other, but it has to be mutual, otherwise forget it? Either way, there are hidden and quite tender depths to this song which could be explored if only there were room, and, as a swirling organ joins the band, the listener has little choice but to accept the words at face value and move swiftly on.

This is a shame, because the lyrics on this album are in no way compromised by the increased unity of sound. The danger must have been fairly obvious: once the decision had been made to go with a particular ensemble and its music, it would have been easy enough to write songs to match that sound. But no – the integrity of the songwriter is a constant feature of Escovedo’s records, which are really no more and no less than his attempts to express what he has to say. So despite the occasional – and we shouldn’t over-state it – lack of uniformity between sound and words, this album is in not Escovedo’s middle ground.

Velvet Guitar is ostensibly a song about writing songs and his unquenchable desire to play his guitar and make his music. But he begins to tell us that he doesn’t care exactly what went wrong, and as he repeats the refrain “Not gonna break him down”, you realise that this is not really just about playing music, it’s about his character and his life:

I hear her sing for me
But she won’t cry for me
I’m wasted, inside

As he goes round in circles, repeating himself, the song becomes a mantra – a very personal one. But there is a strain in his voice, and he clearly cannot continue to internalise this struggle. Amidst a driving incessant rhythm, it is finally time to let the band break loose…by this point on album, this point in his career, he has the confidence to let the electric guitar solo go, give it free rein, and it fits. If he had done this too much, too early, it wouldn’t have worked. He makes sure he establishes his credentials first. So by the time it happens, it gives the song, and the refrain in particular, immense power. With this, you can only hope, he finds some sort of release. The solo itself is a good one, intricate and melodic at once, rising, dipping just a bit, rising again, rising still more, then suddenly pulling back. Reflecting what must by now be emotional exhaustion for the narrator, the electric guitar lets the picked acoustic guitar and cello finish the story.

The last two songs on A Man Under the Influence show that however much he idealises the loved ones of whom he sings, however much he fears them dragging him down while does the same to them, there is a harsher reality. In As I Fall, the bottom line is that some sort of collapse is inevitable, he falls all around the subject, “Voices call but what can I do?” It’s going to happen. He’s just telling us. Then, to finish the album, he says a similar thing more tenderly. The first few lines of About This Love say it all:

It’s all about this love
It’s all about this pain
It’s all about the loss
We take to live again
So if you see me ‘round
C’mon let me in
If you see me fall down
Won’t you let me in

Escovedo is telling you, if you see me fall, if you see me in the despair that I sing about so often, let me in. Again, it has to happen. And amidst a romantic cello, the shimmering electric guitar, and a delicate mandolin, Escovedo rounds off the story with a hint of stoicism in his voice: I’ve said my piece now.

So having used With These Hands to master a sound that would fit his imaginings, with A Man Under the Influence Escovedo relaxed and just produced fantastic songs, each with a refined and natural sound. On occasion, this sound doesn’t quite do the quality of his writing justice, but this should not detract from the significance of the record. Alejandro Escovedo has hit a musical peak, and for the moment, remains sitting proudly at its top.