by Chuck Eddy Alejandro Escovedo’s albums now come with a myth attached – the 57-year-old roots-rock journeyman nearly succumbed to hepatitis C a half-decade ago, after all. No doubt his hard-luck backstory helps explain why the alt-country purists at No Depression absurdly chose him as the Artist of the Decade for the ‘90s. And where his 2006 The Boxing Mirror mostly sounded like mood music ready for a romantic indie movie about the desert, complete with noirish scene-setting not quite worthy of Stan Ridgway and guitars occasionally bunching up for dramatic effect, his new Real Animal is more sharply defined...