Slaid Cleaves' 1997 album No Angel Knows was produced by Lucinda Williams' band guitarist Gurf Morlix and comes out of similar singer/songwriter territory. The acoustic-band feel that ran through Morlix's previous small label recordings with Maine band the Moxie Men combines with the Texas troubadour tradition to produce a sound resembling that of Peter Case, Darden Smith or Robert Earl Keen. A song from Cleaves' early days revisited, a co-write with childhood friend {$Rod ...   [ read more ]

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Slaid Cleaves seems to have found his singer/songwriter niche recording for Philo. Broke Down, which received a warm critical reception in 2000, was filled with detailed stories of broken down lives on the edge of survival (physically as well as emotionally). Although 2004's Wishbones sounds more hopeful, the tone of the material follows the mood of the earlier album. In "Drinkin' Days," the narrator expresses regret at his wild and rowdy days, but when it comes right down to it, his life...   [ read more ]

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Austin-based singer-songwriter Slaid Cleaves writes about losers. Sherry, in the title song of his second album, Broke Down, abandons a "love grown cold" with "Billy" in favor of a pretty boy who treats her even worse. The narrator of "Cold and Lonely" reflects on his lost children and wife. "I lost my wife, I lost my home / Quit my job, and set out alone," notes the singer of "Key Chain," while Sandy Gray in "Breakfast in Hell" loses his life in a logjam and the title character of {&"Lyd...   [ read more ]

CD $17.08