It's unfair to call
Bill Carter
a musician who operates behind the scenes but most of his mainstream success arrived as a songwriter, not performer. Usually, those successes arrived via a
Vaughan Brother
:
the Fabulous Thunderbirds
turned "Why Get Up" into a drive-time staple and
Stevie Ray Vaughan
cut both "Willie the Wimp" and "Tightrope." Some of
Innocent Victims & Evil Companions
,
Carter
's ninth solo album, recalls this kind of Texan blues-rock -- certainly there's a stronger through-line between '80s blues and this 2016 set than there is between this LP and
Bill
's other notable Austin connection, that of
the Butthole Surfers
'
Gibby Haynes
(
was part of
P
in the '90s and played on 1996's
Electriclarryland
) -- but it's hard to call this album conventional.
steers
into the realm of dry, dusty Americana poetry, offsetting his muscular roots-rockers with meditative ballads. Often, he even splices these two aesthetics together, resulting in muscular open-ended numbers where his observations and introspections are grounded by lean writing and earthy performances. He'll tip his hat to particular styles -- "Moscow Girls" is a Tex-Mex delight, "Fisherman's Daughter (Delaney's Song)" is straight-ahead blues, both "Bughouse in Pasadena" and "Exiled" are powered by a love of kinetic AM pop-trash, "No More Runnin'" ends the album on an elegiac, soulful note -- but the most impressive thing about
is how
threads all these sounds and sensibilities to create something that's distinctively Texan and humanly idiosyncratic. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine