Alejandro Escovedo

Musically, Alejandro Escovedo is in his own genre, notes David Fricke in Rolling Stone. High words of praise indeed, especially at a time when most popular music is boxed into styles and rife with references, influences and antecedents. Escovedo may possess a miles wide palette of music that he has absorbed and draws from, yet his own sound defies categorization and transcends boundaries. He is also a consummate storyteller who is held in the highest esteem by his peers, one of who describes him as a poet of the ordinary event. Escovedo’s music can range from full force rock’n’roll to the subtle delicacy heard from a string quartet, sometimes in the same song. Fricke describes him well as a folk-blues classicist with a gritty, plaintive voice and an equal fondness for dirty boogie and spectral balladry. That approach has distinguished Escovedo as one of contemporary music’s truly original and unique artists, earning him consistent critical hosannas. The breadth and depth of his creativity prompted No Depression magazine to name him its Artist of the Decade even before the close of the 1990s.