THRIFT STORE COWBOYS WITH AMANDA SHIRES
PLUSH
Sunday, Sept. 20
From Lubbock, Texas, the Thrift Store Cowboys have dubbed their
brand of alt-country as “ambient/gothic/roots music,” and judging from
the band’s brief performance in the lounge at Plush, that description
fits nicely.
The Cowboys shared the gig with fiddler-singer Amanda “Pearl”
Shires, with whom they are touring. Though still a member of the group,
Shires has moved to Nashville to pursue a solo career; her excellent
new album, West Cross Timbers, was released earlier this
year.
Shires played several songs from that album backed by a few members
of the Cowboys. She has a small, beautiful voice marked by an old-time
quaver that falls somewhere between that of Gillian Welch and Iris
DeMent, but she spiced it with charming grit.
The Cowboys have released three studio albums; the most recent,
Lay Low While Crawling or Creeping (2006), was recorded at
Tucson’s Wavelab Studio. With singer-guitarist Daniel Fluitt usually
approaching the microphone from a shy, oblique angle, the players used
subtle sounds—especially Colt Miller’s pedal steel or baritone
guitar—like daubs of watercolors to evoke shifting banks of
clouds over lonely desert roads, and the accompanying melancholy
moods.
The band admirably crafted midtempo strolls with a carefully
orchestrated shamble, but the occasional two-step, Western-surf drama
and mariachi-flavored number injected brighter color and gentle
textural shifts into the quiet-storm arrangements.
After less than 90 minutes, the show concluded with a fiery gallop
in which the sounds of Shires’ fiddle and Miller’s accordion collided
in a blur of dissonance. The currently untitled new song’s careering
energy brought hopefulness to its dark-sky landscape. It’s one of those
special tunes, the kind that makes you want to hear it again right
away; the band’s merchandise guy reported that we can expect to hear it
on the next album.
Unfortunately, the Plush lounge was not the most advantageous venue
for the band—six musicians playing on the floor and shoehorned
into a corner, in front of an audience whose interest levels varied
from breathless attentiveness to unconcerned yammering. Here’s hoping
that next time these terrific artists visit Tucson—whether
playing separately or together—they can perform for a larger
audience on a proper stage, and for a longer period of time.
This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2009.