http://www.dailytexanonline.com/in-stores-this-week-04-07-09-1.1646486
Hotel Brotherhood
Missing Scenes
As independent music drags its feet through this digital age, a Web site or MySpace page has become vastly more important than a band’s physical location. An unending flow of yet-unheard music squeezes out of phone lines and Internet connections from every corner of the country, inundating any pair of eager ears with a decent computer. Does a band’s sound reflect the place it calls home anymore?
For Hotel Brotherhood, a four-piece that has made Marfa, Texas, its home, the answer is a resounding yes. Hotel Brotherhood’s first full-length album, Missing Scenes, is painted with the same earth tones and big skies that make up the 3,800 square miles of Presidio County.
Lead singer and songwriter Ross Cashiola planned a three-month escape to West Texas from Chicago to find inspiration and write some new songs for a future album.
Cashiola found more inspiration than he anticipated, and those three months quickly became three years and three albums’ worth of material. Missing Scenes is the first collection of these songs to be recorded.
Written mostly in Marfa and recorded mostly in Chicago, Hotel Brotherhood’s first outing meanders through 12 tracks with an accessible and organic sound.
The songs flow seamlessly with the aid of tasteful reverb and simple instrumentation, creating a sound much like early My Morning Jacket or a quieter Neil Young.
None of the songs have a real chorus, but Cashiola’s lyrics manage to stay fresh and familiar at the same time, like the miles of open highway between Interstate Highway 10 and Marfa, with their slow and changing scenery.
Missing Scenes could comfortably take on the roll of soundtrack to any number of highways or cities across the country, but it is most at home where it was born: wide-open West Texas.
Missing Scenes is available at Waterloo Records on Lamar Boulevard.
— Lawrence Lander