Cassette version of their latest release Hit the Head is Texas Music. Tex-Mex has become a pejorative to many, but that dismisses what makes it special...the confluence of Mexican and early German and Czech settlers traditions into something truly Texan. The same goes for Texas Music, with it's melting pot of influence like Texas swing and country music, blues, border music, Acadian music, R&B and soul, and of course, rock and roll. The second album from Austin's Shinglers finds them making a massive songwriting leap, channeling the sounds of Clarence White, Don Rich, and Buddy Emmons' cosmic americana, the great Doug Sahm, and the Acadian jump of forgotten border troubadours like Link Davis, You can practically smell the refineries and chemical plants of the Golden Triangle coalescing with the chewing tobacco and smoke in some backwoods dive on "Bayou Queens".
