REVIEW: cottonmouth, texas, Anti-Social Butterfly (Virgin)
- Lang Whitaker
The day they handed out rose colored glasses, cottonmouth, texas frontman Jeffrey Liles got screwed.
"Everyone I grew up with is either dead, gone for good now, or in jail," Liles says. "Somehow I got left here to try and make sense out of all this." With that vision statement in mind, Liles went into the recording studio with several of his Dallas, Texas-based musician friends. What resulted is cottonmouth, texas' newest album, Anti-Social Butterfly .
Anti-Social Butterfly is exactly that - sticking out from everything else on the current musical row of mason jars. Over moody and complex ambient tones, Liles tells his stories in a quiet drawl that sounds more like it belongs on "King of the Hill" than talking about dropping acid. Liles describes the album as, "a critical mass, slice-of-life diary of sorts. A postcard from the edge, if you will, of what it's like to grow up in the city that killed JFK." cottonmouth's songs deal for the most part with the parts of everyday life that become routine or blunted to most of us. "Hoops (and a search for the truth)" outlines Liles' shoot-around at a local basketball goal. The ordinary repititon of shoot-rebound-shoot-rebound soon becomes a game where the success of each shot signifies a sign from God relating to different aspects of Liles' existence. "Three Dimes" tells of Liles' struggle to borrow enough change to use a pay phone, and eventually de-rails to the point of Liles calling a number scrawled on the phone booth and telling them his name is Ron Jeremy.
The musicians behind Liles are an accomplished lot. Going by the name "The Decadent Dub Team", several years ago their song "Six Gun" was re-mixed by Dr. Dre and appeared on the soundtrack to Colors . Guitarist Kenny Withrow has been with Edie Brickell for some time, and keyboardist Zac Baird also takes time off from Brickell to participate in cottonmouth. Bassist David Monsey and drummer Earl Harvin are both members of MC 900 Ft. Jesus, with Harvin also backing Seal. The backgrounds they create are understated enough to not detract from Liles' stories, but the music also is strong enough to stand on its own.
When writing his "postcards", Liles often teeters on "the edge" he referred to, an edge many of us are afraid to toe. Sometimes Liles falls off, and sometimes he sprints and dives off headfirst, while all the time we stand back and watch. However, the brutal honesty that Liles travels with in his front pocket is often astonishing, and even more often, beautiful.
