If you ever have the occasion to drop in on the Gourds website (www.eden.com/~seagreen/), you’ll find the obligatory bio page displaced by a listing of personally recommended record purchases — stuff from Doug Sahm, The Band, Bad Livers, Steve Earle, Meat Puppets, Boozoo Chavis and…Dr. Dre. You can hear elements of all these artists (minus Dre — you need to see them live to understand that one) in the band’s sophomore release, Stadium Blitzer.
Retreating to the recording site of their 1996 disc Dem’s Good Beeble, a non-studio, in-law-owned ranch in Comfort, Texas, the Gourds have concocted a ramblin’, shamblin’, rumblin’, stumblin’ mix of plucked and beaten-on acoustic instrumentation. The vibe throughout is casually relaxed (to say the least), an often raucous and occasionally pretty affair on which acoustic guitar, bass, accordion, mandolin and “traps” are the principal mediums.
Songwriting and vocal turns are split straight down the middle between Jimmy Smith and Kevin Russell. While neither employ the most dulcet of tones — Smith customarily sounds like he just came to after a weekend bender — that roughness-round-the-edges parlays itself into significant charm, particularly on the album’s two beautifully performed and sequenced centerpieces. Smith’s “Maria” is a lovely border cojunto-via-Guatemala love letter, while Russell’s “Raining In Port Arthur” is stirring Southern soul set against a peaceful backdrop of acoustic guitar, accordion and crickets before giving way to plaintive piano.
Elsewhere, the bluegrassy opener “Lament” is just that until the band locks into a rocking outro jam before subsequently strumming and stomping through “Plaid Coat” and bluesily charging through “Magnolia”; some very cool trumpet-and-trombone arrangements are worked into the Tex-Mexish workouts “LGO” and “I Ate The Haggis”; and “Push Her Down”, the lone Russell/Smith co-write, is a hit single in an alternate universe that doesn’t take exception to accordions or socio-political incorrectness.