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Tex La Homa, "Dazzle Me With Transience"
This already mightily praised release by Tex La Homa finally reaches these shores through the Superglider label. Tex La Homa is Matt Shaw with with help on a few tracks by Dave Purse, and the music is guitar driven with electronic and breakbeat flourishes.Superglider
It's essentially electronic pop, with verse-chorus-verse arrangements and pop song subject matter. Pulsing basslines, laidback grooves, and tripping beats are augmented by electronic whirls, buzzes and beeps. Shaw's voice is low and sensual, desperately wanting all the way through the record. The trouble is that it's too static, too laidback, and too, well, formulaic. I can't place my finger on it any other way except to say it doesn't engage you. Tex La Homa strikes me as another band that looks good on paper, sounds okay on record, but can utterly convert you live. Every song has almost the same flavor, every vocal has almost the same treatment, every beat sounds fairly canned, and the subject matter is mostly loss or emptiness or the futility of love only to be let down again. Sadness overpowers it all, and that's part of what makes it so boring. It is well-produced with fine production values, but is just not all that interesting a listen. 'Dazzle Me' sounds like the desperate love letter to a lover who has not only left, but doesn't want anything to do with your life anymore, yet you still try ('and you know how I feel bout you/still you choose to do the things you do/should you have a change of heart/please don't keep me in the dark' is a perfect example). It's admirable, and by Goethe's "Three Questions," it is definitely worth doing. But does that mean I want to listen to it more than once? Nope.
 
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