Rock 'n' roll and I entered the world within a few years of each other. In the 1960s, listening in my dorm room to the British supergroup Cream, I heard a Robert Johnson song for the first time. A year or two before that, Bob Dylan sent me in the direction of folk music toward a range of backwoods and revivalist sounds, everything from Scottish ballads to bluegrass. Cream (with the then un-famous Eric Clapton in the mix) took me farther down the road to the realm of downhome and uptown blues. I already knew country music, to which I'd grown up listening and which remained on my car radio.

From then on, rock/rock 'n' roll was fading into the distance, occasionally closer when a new record by The Band or Creedence Clearwater Revival or the Blasters or Bruce Springsteen or some particularly thrilling rockabilly reissue showed up. I made exceptions for them because they answered to my idea of what rooted rockin' should evoke: joy, basically.

In fact, I listen to un-hyphenated rock and rock 'n' roll practically never if I get to choose what's on the player. What I hear on a foray into a public space such as a bar is just background noise; it lacks the spirit of rock 'n' roll, at least as I used to sense it when it blew through me.

Then there are the happy occasions when I hear Marina Rocks, and I am reminded of what the big deal was (and sometimes remains) about it all. Also I am embarrassed to admit that since I haven't kept up on current pop and rock, I may not know enough about it to place her music within any but my own very personal, and limited, context. (The nearest I can conjure up is Lucinda Williams, which is intended as a compliment, but Marina Rocks is hardly a clone.) I can only say that if you don't think hers is amazing stuff, we harbor profoundly contrary notions of what touching music is.

An Austin native, Rocks stands out even amid that city's much-hyped music scene. (I reviewed her EP Texcentric in this space on 15 July 2023.) S.O.S. Texas is a full-length recording (nine cuts) and modestly less raw but still by no definition off-puttingly slick. It is still for those of us who want our music to be scratching gravel. Rocks' vocals are tough and able, and her stories are sometimes funny in a distinctive way that may further feature "outlandish" on an adjective menu. ("S.O.S." is as hilariously off-the-wall a Nashville send-up as you're likely to hear anywhere.) She and her small band often -- not always -- play loud but never gratuitously, and there are instrumentals that don't sound at all like filler. To the contrary, some hint at an unlikely acquaintance with an acoustic guitar immortal, the late John Fahey.

She's able to pull off songs -- all of which are original -- with melodies that could have been taken from old hymns, notably the stick-in-the-heart "The Hollywood Sign." While the rockers attract the most immediate attention, subsequent listenings bring the slower tempo numbers (such as "One More Song") to the surface. Meantime, "Mind's Eye" strikes me as better than anything Bob Dylan has written in years. The variety is indeed remarkable. Nothing falters. Nothing is produced to death.

If Rocks' talent is immense, and it is, her musical persona is eminently approachable. (I don't know her personally beyond a handful of exchanged emails. During one I was pleased to learn that we share a common political perspective.) She isn't doing anything wrong that I can detect. She should be famous. But I guess I'm the last one to offer an aspiring star any useful advice; in fact, to the contrary.

Yet I can recognize exceptional music. I don't know how she got to such a unique, moving, honest approach to rock 'n' roll. But I'm thrilled that against all odds, I was there to catch it when it happened my way.