Ghosts of Hallelujah
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On their third full-length, Austin’s most reliably strange roots-rock outfit was joined by two new members, drummer Keith Langford (formerly Damnations TX) and the talented one-man string band Max Johnston (ex-Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, Freakwater). Adding new points of view seems to have loosed a flood of creativity; Ghosts is the strongest of the Gourds’ 90s efforts and a high-water mark of their ramshackle yet deeply satisfying career. The newfound energy shows from the first song, as Langford’s quirky, stuttery drums and Johnston’s fiddle lend a gorgeously yearning quality to cryptic lyrics about toothless dogs and big black “raven-type” birds. Elsewhere, Claude Bernard shines on one-octave accordion and toy organ (really: a child’s toy) in songs like “County Orange,” a rollicking Cajun-punk stomp that draws parallels between childhood and jail, while the darkly pretty album closer “Lowlands” marries a twangy hillbilly vocal, strummed acoustic guitar, and lyrics that recall Cormac McCarthy as filtered through Dada and Harry Smith. Blending country, bluegrass, Delta blues, and Replacements-style punk with whiffs of Tex-Mex and even jazz, Ghosts has the Gourds’ usual grab bag of high-low slacker surrealism: leather trucks, mooching cockroaches, random references to Shakespeare, Carl Sandburg, and the East Coast-West Coast rap wars. Either you’re on this band’s wavelength or you’re not, it’s been said, and for those “unwashed and well-read” souls (you know who you are) who drop everything when the Gourds roll into town, Ghosts of Hallelujah is as good as it gets.
