Alejandro Escovedos latest effort, Real Animal, is somewhat of a concept album. Using geographical reference points, it traces his singular musical path one that started off with punk (the Nuns), carved a road toward cowpunk (Rank & File), turned right into rock (True Believers/Buick MacKane), explored classical influences (Alejandro Escovedo Orchestra), inspired a theatrical work (By the Hand of the Father) and leaped in several solo directions, leaving definitions behind altogether somewhere along the way. Rolling Stone critic David Fricke has described this Texas songwriter as a folk-blues classicist with a gritty, plaintive voice and an equal fondness for dirty boogie and spectral balladry. No Depression magazine anointed him its Artist of the Decade for the 1990s, even before the decade was through. The Americana Music Association gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award for Performing in 2006; when he fell ill with Hepatitis C a few years earlier, musicians all over the country staged fund-raisers, and several participated in a double album, Por Vida: A Tribute to the Songs of Alejandro Escovedo. Contributors included Lenny Kaye, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Cowboy Junkies, the Jayhawks, Los Lonely Boys, fellow True Believer Jon Dee Graham and niece Sheila E. Velvet Underground vet John Cale, long a hero of Escovedos, wound up producing his last album, The Boxing Mirror. Pal Chuck Prophet collaborated with him on Real Animal (produced by another hero, Bowie/T. Rex producer Tony Visconti). Escovedos brush with death has imbued his music new urgency, but hes the kind of musician who couldnt give a bad performance if he tried. No matter what direction he pursues.