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The Transgressors are fast becoming one of Austin, Texas' most exciting new outfits. The brainchild of J. R. Keyton (T. Tex Edwards, Golden Arm Trio) and Chad Nichols (Enduro), the band's musical core lies in the blend of Keyton's reverb-drenched twang guitar and Nichols' rich baritone vocals, with vintage organ tones and mariachi-style trumpet providing occasional accents. While the Transgressors' main interest is roots music, they are not a typical Americana band. They take cues from such disparate material as post-psychedelic 60s rock, pre-British Invasion rock and roll, 80s minimalism, a variety of country styles (roots, Bakersfield, outlaw, and cosmopolitan, to name a few), and the film music of Ennio Morricone and Angelo Badalamenti. This is honky-tonk music for the dyed-hair set. Or soundtrack music for the PBR crowd. Or sometimes just plain high-octane, dragstrip rock and roll. Where the roots influence really comes across is in the band's lyrics. The Transgressors are storytellers, and they weave haunting tales of loss, misery, and frustrated vengeance. The songs are simple, straightforward narratives that traffic in the kind of universal truths found throughout American folk music--tragedy, deceit, death--but the dynamic arrangements throw them into a kind of relief, giving them a more cinematic scope. The imagery found herein is the imagery of a lawless, gothic Texas landscape, and it brings to mind the work of such Texas authors as Jim Thompson, Cormac McCarthy, and Larry McMurtry at the same time as it conjures the stylized American West of Sergio Leone. While it's difficult to place this record in any one category, it has a great deal of range and would fit in nicely alongside the atmospheric music of the Black Heart Procession, the Dirty Three, or Friends of Dean Martinez; the mixed-bag Americana of the Sadies or Calexico; or the noir-ish rock and roll of the Cramps and Dead Moon." THIS IS AN ENHANCED CD WHICH INCLUDES THE MUSIC VIDEO FOR "I'LL NEVER GET EVEN WITH YOU" Check out the artist's website: http://www.myspace.com/thetransgressors Track List: 1. Depot No. 7 2. The Way of the Wild 3. Honeywell 4. I'll Never Get Even With You 5. Cuban Death Waltz 6. The Man in Black 7. The Beginning of the End 8. Montoro 9. Billy Boy is Dead 10. The Exile's Return Suggested CDs:
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