SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: CORDOVAS – THE ROSE OF ACES

CORDOVAS
THE ROSE OF ACES
ATO RECORDS

These days, Americana music space is getting crowded with artists coming up with some high-quality music that spreads across genres with quite some ease.

Still, even with such quality around, for whatever reason, only a few stand out as exceptional.

It could be just the music that switches from genre to genre with ease and excellent musicianship, accompanying lyrics that fully complement the music or any additional ingredient there.

This is where singer songwriter Joe Firstman, his Cordovas, and their latest album The Rose of Aces come in. They have all those above-listed elements here, some classy genre-bending music that covers the ground from Gram Parsons and his “cosmic country” The Byrds, West Coast late- 60s psychedelia, the roots music of The Band, country soul, and modern exponents of the sound of Drive-By Truckers or Beachwood Sparks. And the lyrics are there to boot too.

That extra element? It could be as the band’s PR notes a combination of communal living in an artist community of the Baja California town Todos Santos, as well as Firstman’s unique ability to bring together a cast of characters, like-minded individuals who together conjure the magic that is the Cordovas, or it could be something else. Whatever it is, it works almost perfectly here.

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