Alejandro Escovedo – Gravity / Thirteen Years

In 1991, Alejandro Escovedo turned 40 and also turned a corner personally and artistically. In the liner notes to the newly reissued Gravity, he writes, “One day the world stopped spinning until it took on the proportions of a lifetime, never to be the same again — out of this deafening roar Gravity was born.”

His last band that had received national recognition, the True Believers, had dissolved three years before, their final recordings locked away and unknown. The rejuvenation promised by his live sets with the Alejandro Escovedo Orchestra had lost their luster — “poisoned by the ‘long jam’,” he writes. His marriage to Bobbie Levie had disintegrated; in the spring of that year, Levie took her own life.

Taken together, Alejandro Escovedo’s first two solo albums represent a creative flare-up that little in his storied career presaged or equaled. By comparison, the punk spirit that animated his three previous bands, the Nuns, Rank And File, and the True Believers, however influential and exciting, seems like the pursuit of another man, someone not only younger, but of different ambitions and experiences entirely.

His wife’s death may have driven the turbulent emotions underlying the songs of Gravity and Thirteen Years — both albums are dedicated to her — but Escovedo was finally redefining his vision on his own terms. In doing so, he found what many have imagined and few have attained: a blood-deep personal expression, free of imitation or obvious analog, and accountable only to the brutal honesty of the vision itself.

This artistic declaration would not have been possible without guitarist and producer Stephen Bruton, who had recorded and/or toured with a host of singer-songwriters, including Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, Peter Case and T Bone Burnett. For all his skills and taste Bruton could bring to the studio, he never had a set of songs like the ones Escovedo was writing and arranging.

These weren’t songs that needed dressing up or careful technique: they needed the panorama of a frontier and the heat of the most intimate touch. In “Five Hearts Breaking”, Escovedo sings: “Take the fire in your hands/And place it at her feet/Walk upon the mountains/And then you’ll sail upon the sea.” That was the sound they demanded.

Along with Bruton, a dozen musicians (not counting backup singers) gathered to record Escovedo’s first solo effort at Austin’s Hit Shack in January 1992. Nine days later the record was complete. The core of the band included Bruton and Escovedo on guitars, Terry Wilson on bass, Chris Knight on keyboards, and either Dennis Kenmore or Barry Smith on drums and percussion.

Although Gravity took a step back from Escovedo’s recent orchestra endeavors, pursuing a more focused, song-centered (and sometimes madly rocking) approach, the musicians drive the melodies — many of which Escovedo laid out in clean acoustic guitar riffs — as far as they could go.

The arrangements remain nuanced and adventurous; in other words, the idea of an orchestral (or at least chamber-esque) sound that could still rock was far from abandoned. “By Eleven”, for example, a simple lyric of a prodigal lover’s return, finds cello, pedal steel and piano following and responding to the melody in a single, almost majestic gesture.

On Thirteen Years the orchestral hope takes a grand leap forward. A small string section of Susan Voelz, David Perales, Frank Kammerdiener and Danny Levin worked out arrangements that heightened the emotional contours of the songs without overwhelming the story lines. Strings have rarely been used so deftly in rock music: They didn’t just lend atmosphere, they sounded inseparable from the heart and soul of the material.