Roky Erickson is a rare rock 'n' roll combination, both casualty and survivor. Despite jail time, mental hospital convalescence and plenty of off-the-grid living, the Austin, Texas, vagabond has enjoyed enough incarnations and rediscoveries to make a more quietly dedicated career-artist freakout with envy. In the mid '60s, he was a psychedelic trailblazer before that was a cool thing to be (scoring the maniacal hit "You're Gonna Miss Me," with the 13th Floor Elevators in 1966), and an outlaw Texan blues rocker before Billy Gibbons had facial hair. His lost period during the '70s was as lost as they get, but in the '80s he found fresh purchase via the post-punk psychedelia and roots-rock revivals (the Satanic bluster of 1981's The Evil One might be his career highpoint). When the alt-rock '90s rolled around with its fetish for marginalia, he was a canonical figure, releasing a 1995 album on Butthole Surfers drummer King Coffee's Trance Syndicate label.

But Erickson's more than just a Syd Barrett with staying power. His hallmarks are a kind of hard-bitten vocal wonderment that mixes spite with whimsy, and a songwriting style that channels bluesy hurt and urgency through a windowpane of lysergic pique. And… read more »