We've not been shy in professing our love for The Texas Gentlemen, ever since we saw them play a remarkable show at London's Bush Hall back in early 2018.
Debut album TX Jelly saw the band pull together influences from all over the place into a loose-limbed, delightfully unpredictable whole, and new album Floor It!!! pulls their sound further into focus.
At their best they sound like late-period Beatles covering early-period The Band, but they're likely to veer off towards Nashville or New Orleans or the UFO Club in psychedelic London or invoke the spirit of Haight-Asbury just as soon as you think you've figured them out. And then they'll bring it all back to Texas.
If they're in any way predictable, it's that you can expect the unexpected, expect it to be brilliantly played, and expect it to be a whole lotta fun.
For the official Floor It!!! album release show, the Texas Gentlemen are once again choosing an unpredictable option, offering fans a Black Mirror-style Choose You Own Adventure video which eventually takes them – via one of many possible routes – to a room in which the band play the entire album live.
"My wife Barbara FG (who directed and edited the film) had the idea to do a choose your own adventure virtual album release show," says Gentleman Daniel Creamer. "So we found some software that suited our needs and got to work on a script.
"We wrote the parts with our friends in mind who we correctly assumed would want to get out of the house badly enough to come act in our movie. Luckily we were able to film right at the end of June just before the second round of stay at home orders were in place in Austin.
Creamer finishes by saying, "People are saying this is the 'summer blockbuster that 2020 has been waiting for' but to me it’s not about the fame, it’s about the money."
All you need to do is press play, sit back, and choose whichever path you'd like to take when offered the chance. It's a surreal, discombobulating trip, but the reward is worth it: you'll be able to sit back and enjoy the show as the Texas Gentlemen play Floor It!!! in its entirety. It's a truly blistering performance, and if there's a more beautiful song than Ain't Nothin' New released this year, we certainly haven't heard it.
For the video, the band worked with software company Adventr, a cloud-based platform that allows creators to make interactive, connected videos and then share the results across websites and social media.
