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Through a combination of high-profile opening gigs for acts like Charley Crockett, an insatiable algorithmic hunger for all things vibey, and good old-fashioned word of mouth, the Austin alt-country band Rattlesnake Milk has blown up and sold out every stop on their current tour. This included Portland on Friday at Mississippi Studios, where the crowd buzzed with the anticipation of catching a band before they graduate to much larger venues.
When Rattlesnake Milk took the stage, they embarked on a musical journey that felt nestled in a bit of musical sagebrush somewhere between the breezy, road-ready repertoire of Dire Straits and J.J. Cale and the millennial coffee shop vibes of Khruangbin and Hermanos Gutiérrez, all while tripping on acid in the high desert of West Texas. Frontman Lou Lewis’ urgent and hushed rockabillylike vocals were the perfect delivery vehicle for death-themed lyrics that felt plucked straight out of a Cormac McCarthy novel.
The vivid, literary imagery of a sparse and darkly gothic Wild West was brought to life by guitarist Andrew Chavez, who accentuated Lewis’ singing with expansive soundscapes of airy psychedelia. Songs like “On the Road,” “Come On Home” and fan favorite “.38 Special” saw the band speeding past the barbed-wire fences of traditional country with their own style of galloping cowboy rock. While the songs started to bleed together toward the end of their hourlong set, the packed crowd was fully in the saddle and entranced by these tunes of dark deeds and back road danger.
The combination of Lewis’ warbling vocals and campfire storytelling with Chavez’s shimmering and hypnotic surf guitar propelled songs mostly from the band’s 2022 album Chicken Fried Snake into territory that hit with the tripped-out intensity of a warped Marty Robbins tune. Perhaps as enjoyable as Rattlesnake Milk’s set was fellow Austinites Sentimental Family Band, who won over the audience with the gorgeous, Patsy Cline-inflected vocals of Camille Lewis that lend plenty of twang and dreaminess over classic ’50s and ’60s-style country soundtrack of timeless tunes.
