Shakey Graves Returns Home to Play Show at Stubb’s

Music Pick

Alejandro Rose-Garcia has been having some strange dreams. Better known as Shakey Graves, the Austin artist behind the lo-fi folk ramblings of “Roll the Bones” (2011) and the impassioned blues rock of “And the War Came” (2014) comes to us now in a different place than when we last saw him. What in his music is normally characterized by sharp attitude and a sun-bleached aesthetic is now beginning to shift and ooze with color. All of this unfolds on his latest release, “Can’t Wake Up,” whose nods to bedrooms and fairy tales lift his Americana songwriting of the ground. Welcoming new instruments, more-diverse influences, and a lot more imagination has resulted in a work that is grander and more saturated than anything he’s done before.

Shakey Graves is returning home on June 16 to play a show at Stubb’s as part of the tour for this new record. One thing about his music-making that will doubtlessly remain unchanged is the energy and excitement that he brings in a live setting. Rose-Garcia is happy to one-man-band his way into your heart, stomping on a kick drum and a tambourine, but he plays just as well with friends (his duets with Esmé Patterson are particularly unforgettable). Now blowing up his arrangements and expanding his textures, he invites countless new opportunities for flair in his performances. And if there’s anywhere that he’s going to really bring the heat, it’ll be here in his hometown.