New Releases from Alejandro Escovedo, Shearwater

Two new albums are out from bands based in Austin, Texas - a city that spawned the roots rock and alt-country movement that really saw its heyday in the early 1990s.

There’s new music from an old rock and roll survivor, Alejandro Escovedo, known as a musician’s musician. His ninth album, Real Animal, is being viewed by critics as a great celebration of life after his long battle with Hepatitis C.

And we'll hear from an innovative band called Shearwater. Their songwriter, Jonathan Meiburg, is a graduate student in ornithology, the study of birds. And their fifth full-length, Rook, is a kind of meditation on the world after all the humans are gone.



Our guide, Justin Gage, lives in Los Angeles and runs an indie music blog called An Aquarium Drunkard. He also hosts the weekly, two-hour, Aquarium Drunkard Show that airs Fridays on SIRIUS satellite radio's Left of Center (channel 26).