Red Monroe - Meeting On A Train [20th Anniversary Deluxe]

Meeting On A Train was made on the move. Red Monroe wrote and recorded it across 2004 and 2005 as the band relocated from Norman, Oklahoma, where its founding members had come together as University of Oklahoma students, to Dallas, Texas. The result caught ears quickly: “Sin City Serenade” landed on a CMJ New Music Monthly compilation CD and was picked for Sony’s ACIDplanet remix contest, giving the then-unknown band a foothold well beyond the North Texas club circuit.

The band described itself as proto-punk art rock, and the record backs that up. Red Monroe channels the late ’60s and early ’70s swagger of the Who, the Beatles and Cream through a more modern, Radiohead-inflected sensibility, with Eric Steele’s vocals riding a wash of echoing, twangy guitars and keyboards. With three players trading guitar duties alongside Andrew Snow’s leads, Matt Moffitt’s keys and Jeff Gilroy’s drumming, songs like “To Be Your God,” “Lorelei, the Sky Is Falling,” “Sympathy for Geno” and the title track move from tightly wound rockers to slow-burning, atmospheric stretches, closing out with “Sin City Serenade” and “I See San Bernardino.”

Twenty years later, the band has gone back to the tapes. Gilroy and Red Monroe remixed the album themselves, and Jerry Tubb remastered it at Terra Nova Mastering in Austin, giving these songs the fuller, clearer sound they always deserved. It also marks the start of a series, with the band’s self-titled album and ¡Policia! Policia! set to follow as their own anniversaries arrive.

This 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition presents Meeting On A Train on vinyl for the first time, a collector’s pressing of a cult Texas record finally getting its proper due.