Alejandro Escovedo - A Man Under The Influence (2001) {2009 Vinyl Edition} Posted By : Dr. Robert | Date : 22 Nov 2010 20:08:46 |
Deluxe Bourbonitis Edition (2009)
Vinyl rip in 24-bit/96kHz | FLAC (5% Recovery) | m3u, no cue or log | Full LP Artwork 1.47 GB (24/96) | Roots Rock, Alt-Country | 2001
Bloodshot Records BS 170 LP (2009) ~ Double LP Limited Edition of 1000

It sounds more like a curse than a compliment to describe Alejandro Escovedo as one of rock's most underrated singer-songwriters. But it is a fact, underscored by the depths of melody and drama on A Man Under the Influence. A vital if obscured force since the late 1970s with the Nuns, Rank and File, and the True Believers, Escovedo brings his experience in punk and bejeweled-guitar jangle to bear on the poetic introspection of his solo records.

Influence is his latest beauty to beg the question: What does it take to make this man a star? Musically, Escovedo is his own genre, a folk-blues classicist with a gritty, plaintive voice and an equal fondness for dirty boogie ("Castanets") and spectral balladry ("Wedding Day"). He is also a master of using strings to illuminate both melancholy and hot-rod rock.

The frisky "Velvet Guitar" and "Follow You Down," a fragile pledge of love, each sound in their way like dream unions of the Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet and John Cale's Paris 1919. Inside that dusty grandeur, Escovedo rolls out resonant tales of physical and emotional odyssey like the haunting opener, "Wave," inspired by his father's emigration as a youth from Mexico to the U.S.: "My cousin said we're gonna find the ones that left/A boy climbs aboard the train/Never to wave bye again." With this album, Escovedo's own pilgrimage out of the shadows continues - with power and elegance. (David Fricke RS 867 - April 26, 2001)

Originally released in 2001, A Man Under the Influence cemented Alejandro Escovedo's place as one of the premier performers and songwriters to call Texas home. Alejandro Escovedo remains the rare artist who can crawl inside themes of love and loss and redemption and explore them both intimately and personally. With unflinching conviction, Alejandro Escovedo squares his shoulders and through his music faces up to all that life has to offer,good and bad. Never before released on vinyl in the US, and includes all of his Bloodshot EP and compilation tracks.

Amazon.com's Best of 2001

Ripe with the enigmas of loss, love, and connections across great distances, Alejandro Escovedo's sixth solo album realizes the promise of his remarkable gifts as singer, songwriter, and arranger. On spiraling tiers of pedal steel, cellos, violins, and electric and acoustic guitars, his chamber-rock vision comes to full fruition. He's never made freer garage pop than "Castanets," never stirred a more sweeping lyricism than in "Don't Need You," and never laid bare more soul than in the heartbreaking "Follow You Down" (a ballad Escovedo often dedicates to Townes Van Zandt). Even more amazing are the pairing of "Wave" and "Rosalie," subtle dramas of the Mexican-American passage through separation and faith, and the swirling, aching "About This Love," which concludes "It's all about the way/We break, to love again." Escovedo has always sought a poetic fusing of sound and image; with A Man Under the Influence, that search is complete. --Roy Kasten

Produced by Chris Stamey (former dB's) and performed by many of Alejandro's band of usual suspects, it also features the contributions of Eric Heywood (Richard Buckner, Freakwater),Mitch Easter, members of Superchunk, Ryan Adams, Chip Robinson (The Backsliders), Caitlin Cary (Whiskeytown) and more. The album's first two tracks inspired Alejandro to write the play 'By The Hand Of The Father', which has already premiered in L.A. and was be performed at SXSW 2001.

The tragic irony about Alejandro Escovedo is that he's the greatest contemporary singer songwriter who most people will never hear of. And that's a shame, because he's got tremendous talent, blending all kinds of influences, fromrock to Lou Reed to Iggy Pop to folk, but most of all, he gives it an Austin, Texas feel. It's also a sound uniquely his own, although he fits neatly in with the so called "Americana" musicians like Lucinda Williams or The Jayhawks.

His music has a beautiful melancholy in it. There's also a very strong undercurrent of Mexican American music, and there should be; he is after all, a Mexican American. It's not the same overt Mexican American flavor exemplified by bands like Los Lobos, however, but instead much more subtle. He has collaborated loosely with the Walter Salas Humara/The Silos bunch over the years. In one of their greatest collaborations, which is now hard to find, since it's long out of print, they call themselves "The Setters...If you can get ahold of this CD, get it. Also, as others have said in reviews of Alejandro, you want to catch him live.

Like some of the greatest musicians out there, he's continuously reinventing himself, and each time you see his show, it will have a totally different mood, texture, and atmosphere. I'm not sure there is such a thing as a bad Alejandro Escovedo album, but this one, and the one before it are without a doubt his most polished.

Track Listing

1. Wave
2. Rosalie
3. Rhapsody
4. Across The River
5. Castanets
6. Don t Need You
7. Follow You Down
8. About This Love
9. Wedding Day
10. Velvet Guitar
11. As I Fall
12. Sad and Dreamy (Big 1-0)
13. I Was Drunk
14. Guilty
15. Everybody Loves Me
16. Evening Gown
17. Bad News


Vinyl Ripping Notes

Nitty Gritty RCM 1.5
Technics SL-1200MK2 DD Turntable with KAB Fluid Damping and KAB record grip
Ortofon 2M Black MM Cartridge
Pro-ject Tube Box SE II Preamp
Tascam US-144 external USB 2.0 Audiointerface
Mac Pro Dual Zeon 2.66 GHz
Bias Peak Pro 6.2 recording software
Click Repair 3.4.1 for de-click (manual mode only)
iZotope RX Advanced 2.0 for Redbook conversion
xACT 1.71 for Redbook SBE correction
XLD Version 20101120 (125.2) for FLAC conversion


RCM - TT - Ortofon - TubeBox preamp - ADC - Mac Pro - Peak Pro @ 24/96 -
analyze (no clipping, DC Bias offset correction, each side gain adjusted to -0.5 dB) - split into individual tracks - Click Repair 3.4.1 used in manual mode, 20~30 Rev, Pitch Protection, X2 - FLAC encoded Level 8 with XLD

iZotope DeNoise used on song fades and transitions only.

All de-clicking software used in full manual mode to preserve musical transients.

No music was harmed in the making of this vinyl rip.

No silence been removed, please burn gapless to match original track layout.


Note: The LP courtesy of bh80231
Thanks for sharing and permitting me to make this new rip