Most artists would opt to start an album with a bang, slay the audience with a big, impactful start, and give them something that indicates what the music that follows is all about. James Cook takes a different approach, and the title track, which kicks things off, is almost like a prequel track to the main body of work – it is softer than what is to come, and the only song sung in Spanish. But it is also a statement and an acknowledgment of the influence of the Tejano culture on his upbringing in Texas—a soft, soul-soaked, fiddle-infused serenade, subtle and seductive.
From here, things take more country and folk routes, yet do so in a fairly understated fashion, for the most part, but he never loses the sound of those southern border influences that run through everything found here. “Empty Wagons” has a lilting, old-school vibe, all strummed guitars and picked banjos, and the difference in Cook’s voice from the opener is remarkable.
“How to Live Lonely” is a wonderfully sweeping piece, the fiddle both suitably melancholy and resolutely punchy, the guitars busy and brusque, the vocals defiant and sad. “Coffee and Weed” is a gentle, hippy blues celebration, and “Houndin’ Me” is a stomping, apocalyptic-tinged slice of brooding Americana.
James Cook covers a lot of ground here, with one foot in a general Americana sound, he deftly dances with the other through country, folk, bluegrass, Tex-Mex, and blues, but does so in such a cohesive way that it always sounds like the product of the same artist. And that is a clever thing to be able to do.
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