Photo by Gabriel Cristóver Pérez/KUTX
After the end of the Austin band the Mercers, Peter Wagner bounced around the country, spending time in Idaho and Arkansas before getting pulled to West Texas. His new project, the Sanco Loop, tips its hat to all this circular motion. Sanco is a ghost town north of San Angelo that sits on a stretch of looping road. Coincidentally (or not), Wagner started writing songs for the project using a looping pedal before expanding into a full band. All these tributaries feed into The Sanco Loop, his just-released debut under the new name.
“Hot Year” ambles out of the gate with just guitar, bass, electronic beats, pedal steel, and Wagner’s dusty voice. It’s more concerned with letting in the space than filling it. “Not the one you knew before,” Wagner sings first, staking out this new territory. The song sounds like the end of something–a relationship, a feeling–and at the same time, it’s a beginning.
“Hot Year” appears on The Sanco Loop, out now.
–Art Levy // host, Sunday 10 a.m. – 2 p.m., producer, My KUTX
