Mike Doughty - "Wednesday (Contra La Puerta)" (mp3)
I'm generally pretty loyal to anyone who's been in a band I've rreally liked at some point or another; whether or not what they do later is any good or similiar at all to the old band, I'll usually end up following them there and giving them a fair chance. Mike Doughty, who in his younger, more pretentious-first-initial days as M. Doughty fronted Soul Coughing, is not someone I've thought about or listened to much at all in the 8 years since they broke up, though, and I loved that band. Actually, I haven't listened to the band itself much in that time, either, but I still have a big soft spot for what they did. But once you subtract an incredibly elastic rhythm section and a novel (at the time and, to my ears, still) approach to sampling, Doughty's itchy rhythm guitar strumming and non-sequitur poetry lose a lot of their charm.
The hushed intimacy of Doughty's first solo album, Skittish, suited him well, possibly because he was still in Soul Coughing at the time he recorded it, and he was content doing a kind of sentimental troubadour thing and staying out of the lane of his main gig. I listened to that album a lot when it existed only as a bootleg in the 90's, but I never even bought it once it was finally released. The problem on his new album Golden Delcious, though, is that with solo material his only outlet, he's letting some of his old band's goofball whimsy loose over music that's so drab by comparison that it comes out horrendously awkward. Soul Coughing were, at best, probably just one of the artier bands of what Anthony likes to call "the alternapop era," but now Doughty is linking up with defensible but much blander peers from back then like Semisonic's Dan Wilson (who produced the new album) and Dave Matthews (who released it on his ATO label).
Golden Delicious is one of those albums where I can't quite tell if I just gradually get into it the longer it's on, or the 2nd half really is way way better than the first. And then I go back and listen to early tracks like "More Bacon Than The Pan Can Handle," which makes me want to stab my brain, and I'm sure it's the latter. In fact, there's a good chance that my four favorite songs on the album are the last four. Well, except for "27 Jennifers" ("I went to school with 27 Jennifers/ 16 Jens, 10 Jennys and then there was her"), which I like for the very obvious reason that I'm about to marry a Jennifer who went by something other than Jen or Jenny when I met her.
Before I listened to the album, Dan (who himself already nailed what's wrong with this album) told me to check for "Like A Luminous Girl" as the one great ballad on the album. But once I finally sat down with it, instead it was the song that directly precedes it, "Wednesday (Contra La Puerta)," that I was and continue to be struck by the most. Very little of the album may evoke Soul Coughing in a concrete way, but "Wednesday" definitely brings to mind the atmospheric, almost noir vibe of one of my old favorites, "City Of Motors," while managing to be sonically different enough to not sound like a shallow imitation. The funny thing is, I know someone who's friendly with all the Soul Coughing guys, and through him I've heard a lot of unreleased solo stuff the other members have done since the band broke up that I think is a lot more interesting than anything Doughty's done lately (and which I'd talk about at length here the minute any of it saw the light of day as an official release).
I'm generally pretty loyal to anyone who's been in a band I've rreally liked at some point or another; whether or not what they do later is any good or similiar at all to the old band, I'll usually end up following them there and giving them a fair chance. Mike Doughty, who in his younger, more pretentious-first-initial days as M. Doughty fronted Soul Coughing, is not someone I've thought about or listened to much at all in the 8 years since they broke up, though, and I loved that band. Actually, I haven't listened to the band itself much in that time, either, but I still have a big soft spot for what they did. But once you subtract an incredibly elastic rhythm section and a novel (at the time and, to my ears, still) approach to sampling, Doughty's itchy rhythm guitar strumming and non-sequitur poetry lose a lot of their charm.
The hushed intimacy of Doughty's first solo album, Skittish, suited him well, possibly because he was still in Soul Coughing at the time he recorded it, and he was content doing a kind of sentimental troubadour thing and staying out of the lane of his main gig. I listened to that album a lot when it existed only as a bootleg in the 90's, but I never even bought it once it was finally released. The problem on his new album Golden Delcious, though, is that with solo material his only outlet, he's letting some of his old band's goofball whimsy loose over music that's so drab by comparison that it comes out horrendously awkward. Soul Coughing were, at best, probably just one of the artier bands of what Anthony likes to call "the alternapop era," but now Doughty is linking up with defensible but much blander peers from back then like Semisonic's Dan Wilson (who produced the new album) and Dave Matthews (who released it on his ATO label).
Golden Delicious is one of those albums where I can't quite tell if I just gradually get into it the longer it's on, or the 2nd half really is way way better than the first. And then I go back and listen to early tracks like "More Bacon Than The Pan Can Handle," which makes me want to stab my brain, and I'm sure it's the latter. In fact, there's a good chance that my four favorite songs on the album are the last four. Well, except for "27 Jennifers" ("I went to school with 27 Jennifers/ 16 Jens, 10 Jennys and then there was her"), which I like for the very obvious reason that I'm about to marry a Jennifer who went by something other than Jen or Jenny when I met her.
Before I listened to the album, Dan (who himself already nailed what's wrong with this album) told me to check for "Like A Luminous Girl" as the one great ballad on the album. But once I finally sat down with it, instead it was the song that directly precedes it, "Wednesday (Contra La Puerta)," that I was and continue to be struck by the most. Very little of the album may evoke Soul Coughing in a concrete way, but "Wednesday" definitely brings to mind the atmospheric, almost noir vibe of one of my old favorites, "City Of Motors," while managing to be sonically different enough to not sound like a shallow imitation. The funny thing is, I know someone who's friendly with all the Soul Coughing guys, and through him I've heard a lot of unreleased solo stuff the other members have done since the band broke up that I think is a lot more interesting than anything Doughty's done lately (and which I'd talk about at length here the minute any of it saw the light of day as an official release).
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on Friday, March 07, 2008 at 11:29 AM.
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aw, I miss the "alternapop" era.
I'll have to zero in one that song again.