Though often rendered with a smile on his face, Alejandro Escovedo’s work has long been infused with decay (recall this morbid image from the first song on Gravity about a public hanging:  “…and the bodies will swing side by side”).  Jon Dee Graham is known as a curmudgeon with heart, always looking at the sun though often with a cigarette burning in his hand (who else could name an album Hooray For The Moon?).  They have probably shared the same stage a thousand times since the mid-80s. Both Escovedo and Graham have grappled with major personal and familial health problems in the last few years, each after releasing personal albums that were properly termed career highlights. This year both men returned like warriors returning from battle, Escovedo resurfacing after a very grim liver prognosis, and Graham continuing a successful string of albums while his young son faced a serious disease just as the family lost its health insurance coverage.

Full is Graham’s follow-up to 2004’s The Great Battle and like that album, it’s a culmination of everything that makes his work endearing, from flat-out rock 'n' roll to yearning ballads that could break a clown’s heart. “Jubilee,” emblematic of his state of mind (a chorus of “live and learn” zings with reserved optimism), reinforced with fat guitars and reverberating percussion, is a highlight. Elsewhere, Graham has become a master of small touches that speak volumes, from the arena-era Kinks guitar crunch that opens “Bonaparte” snuggling right up next to the George Benson-ish jazz of “Rosewood.” No surprise then that a song called “Something Wonderful” is so perfect, a dense avalanche of drums and ringing guitars sounding like Keith Richards on too much codeine, a turbocharged radio single of reflection. When Graham sings “there is no such thing as never, there is no forever” in “WCD,” his rasp accented by an aching bluesy guitar, it’s obvious the most important thing is to be here now.

As for Escovedo, and whether he would ever record again, that is answered proudly with The Boxing Mirror, his first album since 2001’s heralded A Man Under The Influence and one receiving a major assist from John Cale as coach. Por Vida, the terrific 2004 Escovedo tribute album allowed the Austin icon to meet the founding Velvet Underground member (long an influence on both Escovedo and Graham), and Cale agreed to produce the Texas musician in Los Angeles. Cale’s deft work on The Boxing Mirror results in the most varied album of Escovedo’s 14-year solo career. The album opens up with a sober kiss-off to Escovedo’s wayward drinking days--“Arizona”--whose title is a literal connection to the singer’s collapse on a Tempe stage in the spring of 2003. Then there’s the psych-rock of “Deerhead On The Wall” (a surreal tale co-written with wife/poet Kim Christoff), while the charming ballad “One True Love” is a throwback to an ‘80s new wave sound that Escovedo and Graham’s old band the True Believers never could've embraced, yet now touches as deeply as guitar ripping rock under Cale’s tutelage (hear also “Take Your Place” for a faded aural snapshot).        

Escovedo’s ability to rip into a song remains evident elsewhere, through a snarling reprise of “Break This Time” from the Por Vida tribute, and most notably in a new pummeling version of “Sacramento & Polk,” a hard tale of drug abuse in San Francisco with hammering guitar punishing the bass like a pounding hangover. The new songs, notably “The Ladder” and “Evita’s Lullaby,” are the most personal expressions Escovedo has ever recorded.        

Both Full and The Boxing Mirror represent personal testaments not only to persevering amidst upheaval, but also to the purity of accepting life by the moment. A scant 20 years ago, both musicians shared the limelight in a band named the True Believers, one of the great American indie groups that collapsed under the weight of unrealistic expectations. Each musician began to carve out his own niche in the 1990s, with Alejandro fast becoming a critics’ sweetheart largely to literate craft, and Jon Dee surprising those who thought of him purely as a guitarslinger (for Lou Ann Barton, Kelly Willis, and others) by blossoming into a well-respected songwriter with a rough-hewn muse.  Each now has released laudatory and celebratory albums with just enough piss to make any punk smile, and overflowing with exuberance for everyone else.  – David Pyndus