Album Review: Chris Hassiotis, Flagpole Magazine
In his spaghetti westerns, Italian director Sergio Leone presented larger-than-life takes on the American West, pushing stories of heroes, anti-heroes, sin and redemption to legendary levels. He created a world that played to the preconceptions of his modern European audiences, both reinforcing and elevating the mythology of the West. Since moving to Athens in 2005, the band Sleepy Horses has worked a similar vein, delivering sweeping desert soundscapes and conjuring images of baked earth, big skies and bigger stories.
Somewhere Out West, Lonesome For You is the debut studio full-length, and it proves that quality shines through: musicians can momve to town (as guitar- and bass-playing vacalist Nic and Brandi Goodson did), enlist a talented local crew (as they did with guitarist Kyle Harris, steel player Matt Stoessel, drummer Jason Peckham on the album and now drummer Jim Wilson for the live shows) and make all the right friends (Is there a night that Nic Goodson isn't outside of Flicker or the 40 Watt?), but if the songs weren't quality then it all wouldn't add up. Luckily they are, luckily it does.
"Lubbock Love Song" opens the album with a spirited West Texas jolt, and Laredo street band number laced with handclaps, and through strong tacks like "Last Straw," "Makes No Sence" and "Hearts Are Breaking", the band explores the possibilities of guitar reverb and dusty, desert Telecaster.
Brandi Goodson takes on lead vocal duties on "Hearts Are Breaking," and her plainspoken phrasing suits the song, and the band, well. There's a slight Texas twang and a Southern curve to her vocals, but the assentuations never over the top, and the slight flatness contrasts the steel guitar and strings well.
The more pensive "Sam and Galen," like "Lubbock Love Song" before it, takes a laid-back and romantic approach, fans of country-pop fusers Calexico should find much to like, although Sleepy Horses don't share the band's overt fascination with the pep of mariachi horns - other influences inclue Buck Owens, Neil Young and other standard touchstones.
If Somewhere Out West, Lonesome For You has a fault, it's that the album can sound a little too straightfoward. It could take more risks and afford to be a little weirder. Closer "Geography" coming in at nearly 11 minutes, hints at some of the more adventurous sounds of the band's live performances, delving more into sprawling feedback and atmospheric layers.
It's a small complaint, though, for this very good album
and at the CD release show this week, the Horses will have a full string section
with them, so it's not like the band isn't moving forward. In translating
for a Georgia Audience, Sleepy Horses recall the stories and sounds of their
West Texas home while making sure the stories are pulled out of the realm of
myth; they're still being written.
Windfarm - Volume 1
Athfest 2007
Various Artists
Sleepy Horses (2004)
"Lush West Texas Deseret Folk". Recorded in a Lubbock TX living room with members of Thrift Store Cowboys.
The Golden Light EP
(2008)