Kids These Days

Shakey Graves is the performing name of Alejandro Rose-Garcia, a Texas singer-songwriter who built his reputation playing guitar and kick drum simultaneously in a one-man-band setup that is as much performance art as folk music. "Kids These Days" has his characteristic mix of storytelling specificity and wry social observation, the song's title functioning as both generational lament and gentle self-implication. His voice is gravelly and confidential, a front-porch narrator quality that suggests many more stories where this one came from. The production — to the extent that minimalist recording qualifies — keeps the focus on the guitar patterns and the lyrical content, the rhythm as physical as anything on a drum kit. Rose-Garcia writes about American life with the eye of someone who has moved through a lot of it, not romanticizing or condemning but noticing with amused affection. "Kids These Days" plays well in the late afternoon, the kind of song for sitting outside somewhere with a drink and the feeling that everything is slightly absurd and this is fine. There's wisdom in its lightness, the shrug of someone who has learned not to take contemporary anxieties too seriously while still paying attention to them.