//новый альбомчик от легенды Психоделик Рок - Роки Эриксона в содружестве с Техасской инди-бандой Okkervil River.

Материал альбома от совершенно "гаражных" треков до блюзовых и разухабистых роковых композиций.

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First things first: after all the troubles he's had, no one would begrudge Roky Erickson a comeback, especially one backed by a band as supple as Okkervil River. The result of his collaboration with his fellow Texans is an album that stands up in a way his last effort, 1995's All That May Do My Rhyme, really didn't. John Lawman is a blistering piece of motorik; Bring Back the Past breezes by in an attractively Byrdsy fashion; Please, Judge is Erickson revisiting his incarceration in a mental institution, and all the more moving for it. But there are problems, too. The songs here were selected by Okkervil's Will Sheff, and the arrangements are clearly his band's rather than Erickson's. So whose album is it really? The motives of all concerned are doubtless true and guileless, but the propping up of damaged heroes – a la Brian Wilson – will always offer as many questions as answers.//original/link

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Roky Erickson has been a lot of things in his lengthy career: howling psych-rocker, LSD advocate, spiritual quester, mental hospital patient, drug-war casualty, junk-mail collector, sci-fi aficionado, self-proclaimed alien, cult icon. Before he was any of that, though, he was a Texan. Sources vary on where he was born-- some say Dallas, others Austin-- but he has spent virtually all his life in the Lone Star State. That's crucial, not simply because Texas breeds a particularly prickly form of artist-- from Lightnin' Hopkins to Townes Van Zandt to Eagle Pennell-- but primarily because its artists tend to fiddle around with form and style, throwing together sounds and genres almost haphazardly. So, as a Texas musician, Erickson is by nature a synthesist, and even his earliest recordings with the 13th Floor Elevators exhibit an intuitive mix of blues, rock, psych, country, soul, and prayer. As his career has progressed, he has settled into that station comfortably, so that he now has more in common with Doug Sahm, ZZ Top, and even the Butthole Surfers (who have all worked with him over the decades) than with any of his 1960s psych-rock peers... read more..

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