Search - Bruce Robison :: It Came from San Antonio

From the childlike collage on the cover to the silly title to the short length, Bruce Robison's fourth album looks to be his slightest. But look and listen again. The pleasure that he and his steady Austin band--featuring a grip-tight rhythm section of George Reiff and Eddie Cantu and the twangy garage flair of guitarist Andrew Nafziger--take in playing together only underscores how they serve an unfalteringly strong, varied set of Robison originals. Opening with the roller-rink, go-go bop of the title track, an homage to the Sir Douglas Quintet, Robison sounds loose and alive. He sinks his soul into detailed family memories and travels on "When It Rains," a story song as wise and engrossing as any Guy Clark epic, while "My Baby Now," with its piano, strings, and Southern melancholy, sounds like a lost Randy Newman ballad. His catchiest tune, "Lifeline," with grand pop chorus, skipping rhythm, and harmonies from wife Kelly Willis, sounds like a future hit for a more glamorous country star. The band stretches out on "Anywhere But Here," rising through a good guitar and mandolin groove and then quietly closing the album with "23A," a love letter to those simple, enduring songs of "love and hope, laughter and tears," the kind passed around at the end of a long honky-tonk night. No songwriter working the borders of country and Americana writes them better than Robison. --Roy Kasten