One of the most striking songs on the disc is "Chelsea Hotel '78", where Alejandro recounts what it was like to be living there during the days of Sid and Nancy. He doesn't romanticize the time like so many others might, but looks at it with cool dispassion and a fair bit of irony. "We came to live inside the myth / Of everything we'd heard," he sings in the opening verse.

The dream goes sour, though, and the fantasy of artistic suffering turns ugly when it meets the reality of Sid Vicious' heroin addiction. Nancy's body found on the bathroom floor was the final death knell for youthful innocence and a reality check. "So we all moved out / (And it makes perfect sense) / And we all moved on / (And it makes no sense)" is the songs summation, and it could just as easily be the epitaph for the whole sordid and sad affair of Sid and Nancy.

"Sister Lost Soul", the track that follows directly after "Chelsea Hotel '78", is almost the answer to the trauma of those early days. It's a gentle song, about having managed to survive and grow up with your ability to feel still intact. Everybody around let their hearts grow hard, and the singer feels "like the only one left alive". Yet he throws the shadow of doubt on his own feelings, by admitting, "You're not the first or last I've lied to / I'm lying to myself right now". Maybe there's nothing left but to get what comfort you can, where you can, and be happy with that.

Real Animal contains thirteen songs, and not one of them is longer than four and a half minutes. This disc is a reminder that's there's a lot to be said for, and can be said by, a well written, and passionately played Rock & Roll song. Alejandro Escovedo is a throwback to when Rock & Roll was something that scared your parents and made the authorities nervous. Real Animal is a breath of fresh air in the normally stuffy world of pop music.