RF Shannon’s Jaguar Palace
The working description of Texans RF Shannon’s music is “South West R&B and psychedelic trail ballads.” The R&B side may be a bit difficult to unpack, but the “psychedelic trail ballads” part is particularly spot on when characterizing the six songs on the Jaguar Palace album.
Jaguar Palace doesn’t work because of its individual songs — hazy, languid and often clocking in at over six minutes apiece, they’re winding snapshots of moderate sonic intrigue. Taken as a full collection, however, Jaguar Palace is a panorama, a sprawling 360 degree exploration of twilight desert night skies, lonely roads and railroads, and the end-of-the-line one-gas station towns inhabiting those edges.
It’s the smaller moments in this musical universe that make you feel like you’ve just stumbled upon a long lost ghost town. “Tell My Horse” may be the dark inverse to America’s “A Horse With No Name,” with its foreboding keys, otherworldly slide and chaotic shoegaze touches. “Had a Revelation,” the relative peppiest track on the album, ends up being less about RF Shannon leader Shane Renfro’s revelations and more about one’s own epiphanies that take place while listening. “Hottevilla,” meanwhile, provides the most headphone fodder to get lost in. The slow draw of its beginning recalling the more discreet moments on Godspeed You! Black Emperor albums and its dizzying flute parts add dangerous firefly flare-ups for the mind to chase.
This carefully crafted world created by RF Shannon triangulates the swirling cosmology of A Storm In Heaven-era Verve, the hypnotic guitar lines of Neil Young’s “On The Beach” and some of Calexico’s more downtempo moments to create something of meditative, lasting beauty.
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