Ground Control Touring

Derail it! De-tune it! Stack it all up and let it clatter back down again. Tour the innercoastal waters in a sailboat with friends. Get labeled gothic country and avant-something and psyche-something then tie it up in a burlap sack and toss it in the Rio Grand; toast life while the whole mess drifts down past Albuquerque and drowns somewhere outside Nuevo Leon.

Castanets is American music drowned then reborn clear-eyed and wet with sea spray. Castanets is murderous nights and the 10 west sunset and crying gulls. Castanets is Raymond Raposa. Castanets is Raymond Raposa alone, walking through the dark and crowded dancefloor, singing bare voiced (rangy, high, cracked and real) with acoustic guitar. Castanets is a four-piece or a five-piece, six-piece, seven-piece, all-of-us-everywhere-piece stomping out electric tombstone chants or something that sounds like Pink Floyd with more heart. Castanets is delta heart, Nashville hands, outer space brain. Castanets is Cathedral (2004), First Light’s Freeze (2005), and now In the Vines (2007) and Tendrils (2008).

Castanets is banjo and strings of bells and howling feedback and high plains drifting and horn sections and brother folk-rock riding in a beater Datsun with sister free-jazz. What’s on their radio? Harmonia? Dirty Projectors? Waylon and Willie?

Castanets is going to look you straight in the eye and tell you “some of these friends of mine, how I miss them so.”

The truth is in the breeze and in the agate blue sky and under the earth. Keep your eyes open. Keep your back strong.