I Want My All ATX: Austin Artists Revisit the 80s

Beginning with its eponymous first volume in 2013, the All ATX endeavor today maintains the local measure for showcasing Austin artists old and new in the best possible light. Throwing around well-heeled covers well north of standards status, the homegrown series introduces or re-introduces scene stalwarts through songs that immediately make the bearer worth sampling. Previous time capsule homages re-envisioned classic canons: 2014's All-ATX British Invasion, 2015's All Along the Moontower: Austin Gets Psychedelic, the blues-rock pairings of 2016's Low Down Violet Crown, and last year's Back to the Armadillo.

Now arrives the series' most unique and arguably best installment, I Want My All ATX: Austin Artists Revisit the 80s.

Despite the fact he sang on the original, Joe Ely's vanilla reworking of the Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go" constitutes a misstep right out of the gate, but all's forgiven when Golden Dawn Arkestra follows up with funk aplomb on "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)," which retains the original's lilt by substituting taut bass struts for synth lines. Shinyribs and Van Wilks serve up a bluesy slather, the former smearing greasy Southern brass on Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" and the latter slinger cooking up ZZ Top-like guitar pyrotechnics on Robert Palmer's "Bad Case of Loving You." Shakey Graves rids the vehement coolness of John Waite's "Missing You" via bedridden heartbreak and throat-heaved cries, while Mélat lifts Hall & Oates' silky "One on One" to soulful, joie de vivre altitudes.

Electro plumes and interstellar frequencies float Sydney Wright's rendition of Queen and David Bowie's "Under Pressure," then Vallejo loosens the disco-leavened "Another One Bites the Dust" with freewheeling percussion that feeds playfully Freddie Mercury histrionics. James Speer dazzles on piano behind the Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House," but Water & Rust's and Geoff Kaiser's higher power reveries rein in Eighties epics "Pride (In the Name of Love)" and "In Your Eyes." Mobley, Night Glitter, Octopus Project, and Alesia Lani further tickle the 21 tracks herein.

You, too, will want your All ATX.