Search - Sleeper Car :: West Texas

Hidden Gem

Gianmarco Manzione | Tampa, FL USA | 06/09/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"What an extraordinary exhibition of influence these songs offer: the echo of a latter day Lloyd Cole album drives a spike through the broken heart of "Heavy Weights," the vaguely new wave "Sound the Alarm"--perhaps the album's finest track--almost prepares you for Hall & Oates to take the mike and belt one out about a woman who only comes out at night as Mark Knopfler straps on a guitar and awaits his part.



If none of the material here really approximates Ward's vision of a rootsy American rock album as closely as he may have desired--Jim Ward still sounds very much like the lead vocalist of Sparta throughout West Texas--it's in his aspiration for a sound so alien to the music he's known for that brings him--and his listeners--to some unexpected creative landscape where willows drip with a melting and late-season snow as an iron and sweeping sky rushes the day to dusk. You lift the collar of your coat to combat a dank chill in the air--one of the last of the season--and you grin and walk right through it as the year closes in on so many warmer days.



Only "Wednesday Nights" and "Fences Down" really hit the alt-country mark Ward seems to set his sights on here, songs that could quite easily pass themselves off as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot outtakes. But, again, it's in the album's misfires that something genuinely fascinating occurs, and it's for that reason that we expect West Texas to feature prominently in many end-of-the-year "best of" lists. Don't miss this record; it's as close to a guaranteed pleasure as we may hear all year.



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