KIDS, huh?

Alejandro Escovedo's 20-year old son reckons that his dad plays old music for old people. In which case, Escovedo Snr is a great advertisement for ageing vigorously. The 61-year-old Escovedo's metier is founded on the music of his youth, much of it, perhaps unusually for a Texan, from over here.

From Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie and Mott the Hoople in their pop chart pomp to the Clash, Escovedo's influences shine through in his songs and in his band, the swaggering Sensitive Boys with their defiant vocal choruses and hard-edged, typically Austin, Texas-honed concision. It's music to these ears, though, that manages to be largely free of nostalgia, rather gaining in currency through the sheer immediacy of the foursome's performance, the survivor-against-the-odds quality of Escovedo's songwriting and the wholeheartedness of his singing.

Escovedo's life experiences are embedded in every lyric, from being uprooted from San Antonio aged seven under the impression they were just going to California for a holiday through to his fast-living days in the Chelsea Hotel, which inspired one of the set's majorly epic, magnificently raging guitar band episodes. He mixes moods, pace and musical styles with ease, even turning briefly into a Latin American crooner, without compromising his hard-living rocker's credentials, to deliver Sabor a Mi, the ballad his father apparently sang to his mother at every opportunity, and gathering his band round one microphone for a campfire-style country singalong before giving in to requests for Mott the Hoople's All the Young Dudes which, as with all else, was played and sung with utter conviction and genuine passion.

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