CD Review: Warren Teagarden's Across the San Joaquin

By Camden Andrews

Following up his debut self-titled EP, Warren Teagarden released his first full-length album, Across the San Joaquin , in mid April. Combining elements of country, punk, folk, and indie rock, his relaxed style is both simple and eccentric at the same time. (more >>)

The album opens strong with “The Deal,” a fun, upbeat tune with a simple two-chord melody. It's not only a pretty good song, but a solid representative sample of the album's tone: bare-bones rock and roll with hints of folk and punk influences, and words about ... well, it's hard to say sometimes. Warren Teagarden has been known for his playful and somewhat abstract lyrics, and his new album is no exception. Many of the songs on Across the San Joaquin offer a vague sense of a subject, but the lyrics are often too random to figure out the details. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your preference. The story or theme is not always clear, but his unusual imagery leaves plenty of room for a good imagination to put the seemingly random pieces together.

Most of the songs on Across the San Joaquin have a pretty basic instrumentation of drums, bass, and two guitars; one strumming fuzzy or acoustic power chords, the other playing basic clean leads. The music is nothing groundbreaking, but there is a relaxed, quirky sort of vibe that sounds a lot like a mellow Pixies record, with Teagarden's voice even resembling a deeper, gruff Frank Black. Even his lyrics possess a level of weirdness that almost parallel the Pixies. A verse in “Light as a Mouse,” for example, goes I've got my treasure maps and we will go down to Mexico, but I won't take my pants off to skin-dive / Hey Barry, pass me a match.

There are, however, different levels of strangeness throughout the album. At his weirdest, Teagarden goes on some silly maniacal rampage on “Haircut,” screaming, Hey, come here get a haircut / Look I got a razor, I'll cut you, I'll cut your hair! / Hey, come here. It can also be sweet and playful, as in “Chapter 21,” a song about love and A Clockwork Orange, teasing, You're one to bitch about a tacked-on happy ending / Who doesn't love a heartwarming tale of murder? The title track itself is much more solemn, with the chorus stating Out on the freeway there are days nothing changes but the waving fields / Big change from corn to grain / Out on the freeway there are things no one wants to see or believe / A wooden boy rolls up his sleeve.

Yeah, Teagarden can be a bit odd, but the weirdness is presented in a way that encourages a sense of curiosity rather than confusion. Across the San Joaquin is a refreshing combination of simple rock music singing about the basics (love, loss, drugs, loneliness) without the lyrical cliches of we're all used to.