‘Ocean Cabaret’ is the name of a mysterious, abandoned strip club in Galveston, Texas and the album that has taken its name for a title sounds very apt. In the same way that you would imagine the location feeling alive with the ghosts of salacious encounters, spilled emotions and frustrated desires, so too the music Galvezton presents on this sophomore release is alive with real life residue, the vintage textures shaken down by modern tropes, a sense of style and swagger standing up for the values that modern life can so easily suppress. The heritage behind the musical journey of the creative core in this act, Robert Kuhn, is rich with iconic Americana singer-songwriters, names like Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen, all of whom filtered into the young Kuhn’s subconscious via the tastes of his father. But post pandemic, the Galvezton project has evolved naturally into a territory that the mere troubadour characterisation can no longer contain. This is a helter skelter dive into a cosmic-Americana sound that is dizzy with the heat and punch drunk on ideas and expression. Recorded over the span of 2022 to 2024 at La Izquierda, the album carries a restorative warmth, wrapping you up and steadying the pulse. Kuhn’s voice can fray at the edges, but like some aforementioned primary influences, this vocal facet can lend to a delivery with unfiltered force.
The La Izquierda location in Galveston is significant because it also founded a longboard surf competition and music festival that Kuhn is heavily involved in. There is a grassroots and community focused, non-profit ethos to many of the local projects he is connected to and that humanitarian, social activist energy does bleed into the music; not to mention a certain surfer-dude breezy coastal calm up front as well. You can taste that vibe on ‘Origami,’ the music feeling like it is the ocean waves that are breathing it into life. The echo and the calm that rises up as Kuhn dreams “what if there was a place that we could go to, what if there was a way to get there, what if I surrender?” It reminds me a little of the War On Drugs, the synth textures casting a spell over the track that evokes space and a never-ending horizon mirroring the relentless questions in our narrator’s mind. But it is also raw and organic in its own way, the heavy strum of acoustic guitar and harmonicas that blow in from the margins welding a human touch to the ambience.
The essence of Springsteen in his ‘Nebraska’ mode is tangible, ‘Tonight’ being an example of a fine track built on this classic framework. ‘Me And You’ is so hazy it might only exist in a dream whilst you feel the heat coming from ‘Paved Roads’ so intensely you wonder if your feet are burning. ‘Quint’s Cantina’ on the other hand is pumping with motion, punched piano chords and fuzz guitar decorating Kuhn’s stream of lyrical testimony. All that said though, it might just be that the superb ‘Roll To G Town’ is the hook track enticing a lot of listeners in to check out this album. The song, the sound of one battered man determined to bounce back off the ropes, albeit via a pathway that is no less perilous than from where he came, is alive with attitude, self-deprecation, and verve. It is like Beck has returned to the nineties and decided he has no issue with being a loser after all. And everything is in place, the peacocking groove, and semi-rapped verses that sound like a bar raconteur not too under the influence but well on the way, then a killer sing-along chorus. Great song and to paraphrase the lyric, you too should take your money and roll to the ‘Ocean Cabaret.’ You could do a lot worse than high loading your musical life with this rough little diamond of a new release.
Danny Neill
Find out more on Galvezton here: https://www.galvezton.com/
Fruit Tree Records 