Lullabies to a vanishing landscape

The cover of I See Hawks in L.A.’s latest album, “California Country,” provides appropriate art for the beautifully baffling topography of a state where millions upon millions still rush in search of their versions of gold.

It befits the “progress” that has led us to 2006: A sad and lonely gas station in the middle of the night, perhaps right off the I-5 corridor, with a cool wind blowing from the desert through the valley and out to the rows of McMansions overlooking the chilly Pacific.

When asked to describe the message of the album, Paul Lacques, the Los Angeles-based country rock band’s co-founder and multi-instrumentalist, recalls a recent trip near his boyhood home in Southern California’s high desert.

“I went looking for one of my favorite hiking spots from when I was a kid,” Lacques says. “There were houses everywhere and I walked forever and couldn’t find this beautiful spot where I had always gone. I got lost.”

That sense of loss is why I See Hawks in L.A. decided to eschew a photo of sunshine and mountains that was originally pegged for the album cover.

As the songs piled up, the group, which also consists of permanent members Rob Waller (lead vocals, guitar), bassist Paul Marshall, fiddler Brantley Kearns and drummer Shawn Nourse, opted instead for a portrayal of the darkness of the disappearing landscape and ideals of their home.

“The album is not only a lament for California, but a lament for the planet, too,” Lacques adds. “We’ve probably done irreparable damage to the earth as we know it, and things are going to change. So we’re in the mindset that we have to be fighting for ecological causes, but we’re also feeling it might be too late. But we’re not giving up.”

This sentiment is most literally stated in the title track of the new album.

“The loneliness around me,” Waller sings. “The freeways just surround me / I’m 30 miles from a field of green / But I’m still standin’ in California country.”

I See Hawks in L.A. was formed in 1999, as the band explains in its biography, when Waller and brothers Paul and Anthony Lacques came up with the concept “during a philosophical discussion and rock-throwing session on an East Mojave desert trek.”

They released their rootsy, twangy self-titled debut in 2001, dropped the critically acclaimed and more musically and lyrically accomplished “Grapevine” in 2004 and have continued to evolve as songwriters with “California Country.”

The new album has garnered them even more sons-of-Gram-Parsons street cred, with former Byrd and Flying Burrito Brother Chris Hillman a guest mandolin player on three tracks plus well-known L.A. country session men Rick Shea, Tommy Funderburk, Cody Bryant and Danny McGough chipping in.

Heck, they’re even TV stars — sort of.

The Hawks recently appeared in a commercial for Spanish beer commercial in which they posed as a band of pistolero-packing pickers plucking dusty range tunes for line dancers. 

According to their bio, the members have played in bands “ranging from ’60 psychedelia, ’70s country, hardcore bluegrass, circus, cabaret, ’80s country, ’90s country, punk rock and world beat, to experimental guitar instrumental music and avant-garde polka.”

That experience pays off in the group’s polished country sound and three-part harmonies. Lacques can color any song with his tasty lap-steel licks and Waller has perfected the lonesome western wail.

And then there are the lyrics, which hit serious and not-so-serious tones while deftly stretching the limits of sanity and subject matter.

The highlight of the new album, “Slash From Guns ‘N Roses,” tells the demented, funny tale of two guitarists — one the real Slash, one a look-alike — dueling with their axes at neighboring Beachwood Canyon parties for the dazed SoCal scenester set.

They take the sonic skirmish out onto the asphalt and the song takes on a new life, sort of an Ecstasy-addled “Devil Went Down To Georgia.”

“It’s actually based on a true story from about 15 years ago,” Lacques explains. “There really was a guy who looked like Slash showing up at parties. But as far as a message to the song, I guess it’s a little bit of a satire on decadent L.A. You know, how the addiction to status can govern peoples’ lives.”

Meanwhile, the eloquently strummed “Byrd From West Virginia” chronicles the life of Senator Robert Byrd, attempting to explain his controversial Ku Klux Klan past while lauding him for the courage to call bulls--t on George W.’s Iraqi war plans.

For a bunch of Hawks, they can come off a little bit like doves, but Lacques denies an overall lefty lean.

“I would say we certainly take strong stands, but I’m very conservative on some things, almost a right-winger,” Lacques says. “I think America’s a modern version of the Roman Empire, with the families collapsing and TV basically being an open cesspool of images for young people.”

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