Wanna tell ya about Alice Texas and the big beat. Specifically, how they slunk outta the rock swamps of New York and went off in search of an Americana that might’ve never been. If the nor’eastern urban gothic blues of their 2001 debut Gold suggested P.J. Harvey down at the crossroads clutching the Nick Cave songbook, Sad Days is the sound of Alice Texas — vocalist Alice Schneider, guitarist Peter Mavrogeorgis, drummer David Berger and assorted friends on upright bass, accordion and horns — venturing even deeper into the mythic heartland.
The journey is about excavations and exhumations, from the literal (on the lam in Kansas with a cowboy lover in the Gun Club-esque slide-guit blooze of “Where I’d Become”) to the metaphysical (“I crawled out of the sea onto land, my belly slick, my head burnin’…I’m a comin’, drawn to you like black on the water,” sings Schneider, part Loretta Lynn brassy drawl and part Hope Sandoval opiated slur, in the jagged country-jazz noir of “Run To You”).
Throughout, the vocals and sonics carry a harrowing emotional heft — you’ve never really felt whisper-to-scream dynamics until you encounter the apocalyptic climax of the slow-burner “New Leaves” — but it’s thankfully devoid of the histrionics and pull-a-rabbit-out-of-a-twat tricks rendering so many of today’s “intense” young divas cartoonish. Schneider doesn’t need gimmickry. With her raven-tressed, smoldering good looks, lyric sensuality, and charismatic delivery, she’s a force of nature.