Let me drop my critical guise for a moment and talk straight from the heart: I love the Gourds. This Austin combo is all about serious fun. They have livelier music than your favorite bar band and more memorable lines than a lounge lizard, and they keep getting better. Their oddball sensibility and twisted wordplay would be the envy of They Might Be Giants, and they deliver on the infectious good times NRBQ should always supply. They command such an embarrassment of riches that they can put out a delectable new record in conjunction with two impressive solo albums. How many other groups could pull that off?
Cow Fish Fowl Or Pig, the Gourds' sixth and best album, opens with "My Name Is Jorge", an easy-rolling, call-and-response tale of a fruit-hocker that namechecks William S. Burroughs, Muhammad Ali, Henry Ford and Lee Harvey Oswald. Elsewhere, their odd morality/mortality tales ("Roll & Tumble", "Hell Hounds" and "The Bridge", which toasts James Brown) are balanced by their fatalist-tinged, wild-ass, good-time tunes ("Foggy Blossoms", "Ants On The Melon", "Sweet Nutty"). A guest spiritual rap in the middle breaks things up nicely, while sweet yearning songs like "Blankets", "Right In The Head" and "Ham-Fisted Box Of Love" show a serious, but never morbid, side of the group. In short, they find the right mix of whimsy, poetry and smarts.
All of which is easy when you have three songwriters at work. With fiddler Max Johnston perhaps storing up for his solo turn, guitarist Kev Russell and bassist Jimmy Smith have recently unleashed their own. Though Russell previously shunned the mechanical age, Buttermilk & Rifles makes use of computer programs, but the music retains the nice, down-home feel you'd expect from him. With help from his fellow Gourds, he comes off as part seer, with vivid tales such as "Twilight Of Song" and "Way Fallen Stranger", and part nutball, with sing-alongs such as "(Somebody Bring Me A Flower) I'm A Robot" and "Ashes In My Beard".
Jimmy Smith (aka Clocker Redbury & Dusty Slosinger) actually recorded Cold War's Hot Water Shower, his second solo album, two years ago with his reel-to-reel 4-track machine for his own label. The disc is a charming diversion, even looser than the Gourds, reminiscent of the gloriously goofy Holy Modal Rounders and the surreal lo-fi folk of early Beck. How else do you describe songs about showering, international intrigue ("I'm A Commie"), more erudite namedropping ("Dusty's Wet", starring Mao, Marx and Thomas Paine), and an eating lesson ("The Blue Bottled One")?
Given that they're able to put out three separate good albums in the space of a year, maybe the Gourds would consider pooling their resources and putting out a mighty box set next time? Nah, that would be too grandiose for such modest folk...
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