Art-guy rock

Salas-Humara is right about one thing: when push comes to shove he does usually end up filed under nouveau roots. (A review of the Silos' Susan Across the Ocean that ran last year in Alternative Press referred to his band as "one of the better tears and beer bands of the Southwest.") But he's not entirely innocent of the charge. The Silos, a loose affiliation of friends and collaborators that began in NYC and once counted Cracker guitarist Bob Rupe as one of its steady members, have charted a course through rich singer/songwriter terrain where the Velvet Underground and Big Star stand on equal footing with rootsier folks like Gram Parsons and Jimmie Dale Gilmore.

Salas-Humara has been in the driver's seat for most of the Silos' 10-year career. And his folk-rock-like collaboration with Austin cult heroes Alejandro Escovedo and Michael Hall, who called themselves the Setters and released a homonymous disc on Watermelon last year, certainly didn't help distance him from the roots-rock pack. But Radar (Record Collective), a new solo disc he recorded at his new home in LA on a portable eight-track machine, should help his case, or at least remind us that the roots thing of the early Silos discs reflects only one side of Salas-Humara's estimable talents as a songwriter.

The best song on About Her Steps, the Silos' promising 1985 debut, was "Start the Clock," a restless and moody rumination on passing the time, built on a vaguely R.E.M.-ish riff that slowly circled in on itself. Radar finds Salas-Humara still with his eye on the clock. "It's this fucking rain . . . it's the one that gets blamed for all the time that's wasted" he intones on the ominous opening track, "Three, Two, One and More." But the spare jangle of "Start the Clock" has been replaced by a more complex clutter of stumbling drumbeats, darkly droning guitar, and unsettling cries from a violin, the latter courtesy of Silos regular Mary Rowell. Another Silos standby, bassist Tom Freund, joins Rowell and Salas-Humara on the next track, the driving, distortion-and-feedback-laced "Be Honest with Me." (Freund and drummer Dave McNair are joining Salas-Humara on a tour that comes to the Middle East this Wednesday.)

Radar's music steers clear of patent roots-rock moves, but Salas-Humara's lyrics and his gritty delivery still evoke the stark, wind-and-rain-beaten emotional terrain of the open road. "There's been too much rain/Now there's too much sun" he croons with a slight twang on the downcast "Letter To Send," one of three tunes that features Kevin Salem on lead guitar. He's also got a singer/songwriter's eye for telling details and cinematic juxtapositions, like the carefree girl who listens only to pavement and the hopeful newlyweds who populate "Evangeline." "It takes some kinda concentration to curve and shake and bend and sway," he sings, and you're not sure whether he's referring to Pavement's music, the girl, the newlyweds, or all three. The ambiguity is part of what makes it a great song.

"There's a lot of free association in my lyrics," he explains. "A lot of times I'll pick a phrase just because I like the sound of the words. I think for the most part people don't listen carefully to rock songs, but certain phrases or words will just pop out and affect you. Like on the coolest Rolling Stones records, you don't hear all those lyrics, you just hear `You've got to roll me like the tumbling dice.' All the songs on the new record were written while they were being recorded. It's just me in my crazy little patched-together studio playing drums to nothing and then adding guitar, keyboard, vocals, and whatever else over the beat. It really was almost like making a collage."

You could say the same of Salas-Humara's career, in which he's intuitively stitched together a comfortable patchwork from musics as divergent as classic Stones-style rock, Velvets/R.E.M. folk, and Austin country.

"There's just this weird combination of art person and marginal guitar player in what I do," he concludes. "I went to New York to be an artist and ended up being an indie-rock guy. And I feel pretty fortunate to be doing what I'm now doing."