San Francisco Treat

A bitter guy -- crotchety even? You could say so. Though he's modest and affable in person, after a few drinks he shows his wounded romantic side, and that's what you hear on the records. There, even when Ashley is trying to be happy, as on The Gris Gris's dazzling little tropicalia number "Me queda um bejou" and the Let It Bleed-style bluesy, country honk of "Winter Weather," an overweening, Leonard Cohen-ish sadness drapes shroudlike over the songs. They conjure the time when the last red-hot embers of youth are slowly turning to ash, when you realize most of your dreams are just romantic folderol, that life is indeed a bitch and that then you certainly die.

He's not content to take this crap lying down, though. Elsewhere there's plenty of rage, which jells best on The Gris Gris on "Best Regards"; bassist Oscar Michel rumbles in with a roll of quarter-notes and is joined by drummer Joe Haener, who pounds out a tribal-sounding rhythm on the toms. Ashley's guitar and vocals almost sidle in, and after a sinister, difficult-to-decipher vocal interlude in which he sounds a bit Aleister Crowley-ish, Ashley's guitar quite simply eases off of terra firma in a cloud of billowing feedback like a doomed rocket blasting off the pad. It happens slowly at first, and the band stays with the same minimalist backing save for a snare joining the toms, but by the end of the tune you've been dragged by the hair -- in a good way, mind you -- through places that are both terrifying and thrilling. It's almost painful to listen to, but it's undeniably awe-inspiring. And this extended sucking-in-of-breath of a song is fittingly followed by the warm, sunny breeze of "Medication No. 3," which feels like one long sigh.

Talking to the guy, who looks as mild-mannered as the optician's assistant he is by day, you want to know where the hell stuff like "Best Regards" comes from. Kurt Brennan of Sound Exchange is another who would like to know. Before Ashley moved to California two years ago, Brennan signed the band to his Fleece Records label. "What was amazing about them was that they weren't very familiar with the guys they reminded me of," Brennan says, citing such psych legends as the Electric Prunes, the 13th Floor Elevators and especially Brother J.T. "And then there was the fact that they were from League City, which gave it a bit of an outsider edge, and also the fact that they weren't even of legal drinking age. And I stress 'legal.' "

Sound Exchange -- where he will play one of two gigs this weekend -- is one of the few things Ashley misses about Houston. No tsu oH is another, as is the fact that he feels he works harder on his songwriting here. "It's harder to get stuff done" in Oakland, "because there's more to do," he says. "Before, I would sit in my room, depressed and bored, and write songs." And it seems he's become Californian whether he likes it or not. On the I Love Music message boards, one Netizen informally reviewed Medicine Fuck Dream and called it "great, shambling batshit folk rock…Really, really interesting in that hopelessly Californian way."

"That's funny," says Ashley. "I recorded all those when I was living in the Houston suburbs. I didn't write any of those songs here -- it just got put out after I moved."

Other Californian scribes have been even more insulting. Of the album's "Plain Vanilla," some Canadian wanker named Mike Usinger at the Vancouver-based Web site straight.com had this to say: "Featuring dime-store castanets and flutes, the song probably won't lead to any encores in Houston, but it's warped enough for the discerning noise-pop fans of Oakland." He also called Houston "a shitkicker's paradise." Yeah, about all we can stand here is "Achy Breaky Heart," dude.

But in a way, maybe Mikey was right. Of course, he was wrong about the shitkicker part -- if he thinks we're a bunch of hicks, he's never been here. But we do lose far more talented musicians than we gain. Is it that we're too lazy, too indifferent to hang on to musicians like Ashley and his fellow San Francisco transplants Jolie Holland and Rogue Wave's Gram Lebron, not to mention stay the continual exodus to Austin?