David Garza: Overdub : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

He may be a Mexican-American singer-songwriter based in Austin, but David Garza is no rootsy, confessional strummer. First of all, it's pronounced dah-VEED, and second, he sings in a splendidly busy tenor topped with showy vibrato. Then there's the music - rollicking pop tugged with an industrial undertow, as clangy as it is hooky, and deliberately overproduced. Despite its cold, metallic trimmings, Overdub is all passion and surprise. Garza specializes in the midtempo modern torch song ("Alone," "Carry Me") and dramatic imagery ("Crown of Thorns," "Bloodsuckers"). But no regular torch singer would name a patter-fast song with Latin guitar pluckings "Drone" or match the heavy swirl of Seventies metal with breezy syncopation ("Blow My Mind," "Mob Rock") or wax wry about bad R&B music on the soulful "Say Baby." With his inexhaustible senses of melody and humor, the eccentric Garza dances on the edge of pretension and makes it sound like a party.

ARION BERGER
(RS 871 - June 21, 2001)