Garrett T. Capps & Nasa Country - People Are Beautiful (Vinyl/Record)

Strap in, space cowboy! San Antonio psychonauts Garrett T. Capps & NASA Country are moving in slow motion through low orbit, gettin’ ready to tractor-beam their latest album down to earth.

People Are Beautiful, the final installment of the “Shadows Trilogy”, was written in the early days of the pandemic, when the light at the end of the tunnel was very dim indeed, and recorded in December 2020 at legendary border-town studio Sonic Ranch during peak uncertain times. And well, it’s only gotten weirder every day since then really, but NASA Country’s here to spread cosmic posi vibes, even if every sprint around the sun lands us in stranger territory…

From the jump People Are Beautiful sounds like dialing in to an alien wavelength, trans-dimensional frequency hiss being a major part of the album’s total feel. “Gettin’ Better” kicks things off with a jangly, feel-good two-stepper, punctuated by free-flow slipstream percussion and glimmering modular synth refractions.

The vibe gets darker and the mood gets heavier on standout track “Rip Out the Darkness,” where a chuggin’ swamp blues riff disintegrates into a deep-space spiral, Capps switching between full-octave falsetto and a hoarse yell. “It’s gettin’ weirder every day” he says somewhere in between, in this ripper about the 24-hour news cycle blues.

Elsewhere NASA Country revives the krautrock fiesta sound they’ve been kicking around for a few years now. “Time Will Tell” is built around a shimmering, retro-futuristic synth arpeggio that could have bedrocked an extended Neu! jam. The closing, title track is another nugget of Honky-tonk Kosmische, ending things with a brusque motorik shuffle.

Across People Are Beautiful’s eight tracks, NASA Country surfs gravitational waves of carefully shaped reverb & frame-rattling feedback, moving at different speeds at different times. No matter how out-there they get, though, Capps never fails to connect with the slightly-freaked-out wit and charm he’s become famous for in San Antone.