Boxcar Satan
Upstanding and Indigent
No-account no wave blues from San Antonio, Texas; Boxcar Satan deconstructs American roots music and pours a particularly venomous brand of self-loathing noise from the demon bottle.
On its third long player, Boxcar Satan continues to defy expectations and expands its already diverse sonic palette by ornamenting its noisy, post-punk take on pre-war blues with touches of Cajun music, gospel and even tasteful prog. Honing their songs with a newfound melodicism and complexity, the Boxcars spin tales of train-wreck lives, bandit queens and carnival freakshow stars. And their take on the Depression-era song "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?" seems all too appropriate in the current political environment.
Recorded after the addition of former Worm, 1.0 and Shit City Dreamgirls drummer Ken Robinson, we defy you to find one clunker amid the 16 tracks here.
"One of the most enjoyably indefinable bands making a racket today, Boxcar Satan makes a freaky, scary, Tom Wait-sy mix of gothic roots music and late ’70s punk rock. The band must been seen, and experienced, to be believed." -- Houston Chronicle, Jan. 6, 2006
"Upstanding and Indigent is the third full-length from this Texas band, which propogates a righteous, too-little-heard strain of sounds from the "new weird America." Muddy Waters and Bob Dylan have their proper place among the influences here, but so do Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits and Pere Ubu (as well as the Birthday Party, being honorary Americans for this purpose). Jarring, swampy strangeness is the dominant mode -- death-rattle saxophone, bloodhound-howling slide guitar, fiddle and dead-drunk Cajun accordion -- but the band also seems more than comfortable playing it (almost) straight on a fervent gospel tune, "Drunk on the Blood of the Lamb," and a frenzied version of "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?" -- Chicago Reader, Oct. 15, 2004
"The blues may have been born in the Mississippi Delta, but Robert Johnson's first recordings in 1936 were made at San Antonio's Gunter Hotel. With their third full-length outing, SA's Boxcar Satan pays a twisted sort of homage to their fair city's musical legacy with a slam-bang concoction of blues and avant-punk distilled to its most potent essence yet. The trio flails about with the tight-fisted ferocity of a Jesus Lizard or Pere Ubu, but what really distinguishes Boxcar Satan is the gravelly growl of vocalist/guitarist Sanford Allen. Allen bellows like the progeny of Captain Beefheart or Tom Waits, and he does so without it devolving into a fallow affectation." -- Austin Chronicle, Feb. 27, 2004
Rock: No Wave