HAYDEN PEDIGO
Letting Go MEXICAN SUMMER
8/10
Poignant Panhandle ambience from an accidental politician
Like his viral 2019 campaign for Amarillo City Council – which began as a series of bizarre online videos before turning into sincere advocacy – Hayden Pedigo’s latest album of experimental guitar instrumentals might strike some as a joke: just check out that ridiculous KISS-meets-Del-Reeves album cover. But Pedigo’s music is disarming in its careful songcraft and its immersive desert ambience. An ingenious writer and picker, he deploys new tricks on every song, like the spidery riff that skitters through “Some Kind Of Shepherd” and the end of the title track that sounds like a truck sputtering on an empty desert highway.