Hot Sounds, Summer in the City

Oh shit, summer's here. And you thought the highs were going to stay in the '80s? Hah. Welcome to the jungle, baby. Now you're gonna die.

Anyway, being a born procrastinator, I didn't get around to a spring cleaning until what passes for spring down here in the subtropics was all over. And for me, a spring cleaning involves scooping up all the local CDs that have been piling up on my desk since the start of the year, culling the best I haven't already squawked about in print elsewhere and penning a few words about them.

So away we go...

Hilary Sloan
Images from Hard Luck Town
www.myspace.com/hilarysloanmusic

Wow. We all knew Sloan, the sister of Miss Leslie of Juke Jointer fame, had this in her, but it's still always at least a little bit surprising when a huge talent truly comes into its own. Sloan sings like an angel and fiddles like that demon who kicked Charlie Daniels's ass on this all-too-short collection of twangy styles ranging from cowboy jazz ("If We're All the Same") to brooding, reverb-heavy Appalachian rock ("Valley of Shadows") to Sinéad O'Connor-ish Celtic-tinged dirges ("Midnight on the Stormy Deep"). When Sloan's dark, as on "Midnight...," she's really dark, and when she dances, she does so like nobody's looking, as on "Devil and the Deep Blue Sea." There's also an elegy to Rachel Corrie, the American activist crushed in the West Bank by an Israeli bulldozer. And "Hard Luck Town" is a cantering waltz to which anyone who has clocked a few years on this city's music scene can relate: "If I could get out of this town / oh Lord I'd find me a place where I could settle down," she sings in her honeyed alto, "Stop drinking and running around / if I could get of this town / this heavy and hard luck old town." This disc is a triumph, people.

Hilary Sloan plays Thursday, June 21, at the Last Concert Cafe, 1403 Nance St. Later that night, she will play the Big Top, 3700 Main. She is also playing June 23 at the Continental Club, 3700 Main.

Billy Cook
The Truth
www.myspace.com/billycooksuperstar

Modern R&B singer Billy Cook is a superstar. Just ask him; he'll tell you as much. Houston's slightly more thugged-out answered to R. Kelly kind of deserves the accolade, as he's been singing hooks for many of the city's top rappers going all the way back to Big Mike's 1993 classic Somethin' Serious. (That's the 17-year-old Cook on "Get Over That.") The gospel-raised Cook does have an amazing tenor, even if he lapses into more than occasional melismapaloozas. "Rep the South Side" has a chilled vibe that suits the quasi-rural southern fringe of Houston, while "Rollin'" has a bit of a bhangra feel. Bun B drops in on the club banger "Slab on Blades"; Trae on a couple more; Chamillionaire on "Claimin' They Gangsta." "Lil' Strippa" builds a slinky pole anthem off a sample of the Isley Brothers' stellar cover of "Summer Breeze." Hard to imagine Seals and Crofts had jigglin', wigglin' apple bottoms in mind when they wrote that soft rock classic, but whatever, it works.

The Freddie Steady 5
Tex-Pop
www.steadyboyrecords.com

A La Porte native and long-term resident of Austin, Freddie "Steady" Krc has worn many hats over the years. He's put in many years banging the skins for Jerry Jeff Walker, backed both Roky Erickson and Roger Waters, and released a mess of solo albums with a few different backing combos. He's also big overseas, especially in London and Prague, the capital of his ancestral homeland. Tex-Pop is a classic example of succinct truth in advertising. The underlying principles of power-pop — short, sharp songs, catchy melodies, copious jangle, snappy tempos, heaping helpings of harmonies — are energy-boosted here with generous shots of Texas essence (Texessence?), and the result is the perfect album for a Hill Country Saturday-night dance party. "Le Jardin de Lumiere" is a midtempo rocker that made me think of Rodney Crowell, while songs like "Tin Whistle & a Wooden Drum," "London" and "What's So Hard About Love" feature that pillar of both the British Invasion and Tex-Mex rock — the Vox Continental organ.