Eric Caldera's instrumental post-rock band El Valiente has garnered him the most attention in Madison, but his quieter solo project, Oedipus Tex, has been around much longer. Besides that, it gives Caldera a chance to write lyrics and sing, which winds up being the focus on his new release, Borracho Corazon. Not to say that his intricate finger-picking style doesn't initially pull listeners in, but it's Caldera's cracking voice that engrains songs like "Leave Room" with a sense of loneliness and makes you jump a bit when he delivers lines like "I'm coming out your fucking stereo" on "Yonder." Though, it's his friends and bandmates who lift the last track, "Firefly," to its breathtakingly rocking close. -Onion/ AV Club

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Borracho Corazon picked as a top 10 Madison album of 2012 by Scott Gordon, The Isthmus

Bio by Jess

Both El Valiente and Oedipus Tex evoke a certain type of desert loneliness with shimmering finger-picked guitar lines and tragic melodies that swell and recede, a sound equally fitting for a cowboy at a campfire and an indie rocker at a dive bar. While a number of forces have conspired to create this sound, it has much to do with Caldera's upbringing in Texas. -Jessica Steinhoff, The Isthmus