Centro-Matic and South San Gabriel are typically discussed as more or less solo projects for Will Johnson, the ambitious Austin troubadour who specializes in dark, dusty desert noir. It's not just that he is a primary contributor to both bands, or that he launched Centro-Matic as a home-recording project, but that his contributions under each banner sound so distinctive. There's no mistaking his gravelly vocals, his rummage sale lyrics, or his rusted-out guitar tone. Each of his groups defines itself by how it deploys these signature elements: Centro-Matic grind out weathered but tightly wound indie rock, treating Johnson's sometimes indecipherable lyrics as fever dreams brought on by exposure to the sun and distortion. South San Gabriel, which features all of Centro-Matic plus a revolving line-up of friends, dresses Johnson's vocal in strings, drum loops, and off-kilter sounds, their ornate arrangements favoring ambience above all else.
Dual Hawks is, for lack of a better word, a double album: two LPs packaged together, one from Centro-Matic and the other from South San Gabriel, explicitly underscoring the innate similarities between the two projects as well as the complementary differences. On paper, it sounds like an intriguing idea, but the Centro-Matic half so thoroughly outshines the other that it's hard to imagine anyone playing both after a month or two. In other words, it's bound to become a single album in practice. Which raises a question: Why even compartmentalize these variant musical impulses? Why not shuffle them song by song, so that Centro-Matic's spiritedness might add gravity to South San Gabriel's ambience and vice versa?
It's not that the South San Gabriel half is bad, just a bit slow and sleepy. Where Centro-Matic songs seem spring-loaded, these tracks sprawl. Songs like the plodding "When the Angels Will Put out Their Lights" and the thudding "Of Evil/For Evil" sound overthought and fussy, as if Johnson worked to include everyone who showed up at the studio. There are moments of clarity, as on the clockwork "Kept on the Sly" (Matt Pence's drums are as distinctive as Johnson's vocals) or on closer "From This I Will Awake", with its combination of organ drones and wailing voices. There are eleven musicians on these recordings, yet it still sounds like a Johnson solo project (specifically like his actual solo album Vultures Await), placing his vocals at the forefront and dressing them in strings and effects that suggest, but don't always achieve, a sort of No Country widescreen vista.
Tighter, louder, faster, and punchier, the Centro-Matic half picks up where 2006's excellent Fort Recovery left off, maintaining that musical intensity across eleven songs. The drums still scuffle, the guitars still grind, and Johnson still comes across as a desert romantic on par with Calexico or Howe Gelb. Unlike them, however, he has a weakness for lyrical impenetrability. "Eighteen tubes of butane running corporation fairs / It's discount-like and out of time," goes the opener, "The Rat Patrol and DJs", but as Johnson sings them, they sound nevertheless compelling, especially when he crafts unexpected hooks from the ooo-ooo-ooo's at the end of each chorus couplet.
As the album proceeds, Johnson allows quick glimpses of larger issues, like the doomed rock shows on "Remind Us Alive": "Did you notice the frequencies will damage you for life?" Johnson spits, drawing out the long syllable in the last word, "as if the saccharine songs they're playing ain't enough of a lie." The band itself undergirds Johnson's words with a sound that is anything but saccharine. Pence alternates between chugging, nearly robotic beats and cymbal-punishing high drama, and Scott Danbom's synths pop up in odd places, like he's stalking you. Centro-Matic are a guitar band above all else, and Johnson and Mark Hedman's dual hawk guitars slice against each other, the rhythm lines almost undercutting the leads. As crafty a songwriter as Johnson may be, the music delivers more meaning than the words. That's what South San Gabriel shoot for and what Centro-Matic achieve naturally.
