Shopping List: Special Conflicted Interests Edition
Unless you're some sort of sociopath, if you write about music long enough professionally, you'll eventually become friends with musicians, their management, or both. Unfortunately, a certain awkwardness sometimes ensues when they send you their own often quite wonderful releases for consideration, since most media outlets of any integrity would prefer, for obvious reasons, that one not review one's friends' work. But insofar as this blogger's his own editor—and because these discs are simply too excellent to ignore, and most of them won't get the coverage they deserve elsewhere—here's my take, with appropriate disclosures.
John Doe, A Year in the Wilderness (Yep Roc)
John Doe, front man for the great middle-aged Los Angeles punk group X, has actually been getting plenty of kudos for this rock-solid solo album that plays like a gritty film noir. More or less set in the singer's despairing hotel room, it's a glorious downer of an album, featuring a singer who aspires to redemption by 'fessing fully to his failures. (Doe's manager is a family friend who grills a mean chicken.)
Mark Donato, I Haven't Wasted All This Time Alone; Good Loser Club (Rag & Bone Shop)
Mark Donato and Mark Lerner are former members of the wonderful Band-inspired roots renegades Flat Old World. Fittingly, they reside in upstate New York, where they continue to record dapper Americana tracks, with finely tuned emotional engines and city-slicker smarts, for Lerner's Rag & Bone Shop label). Donato's album is in large part a dark yet friendly meditation on love (a little) and death (a lot): His breathlessly sung tunes include "Everyone's Going Away" and "Speeches at My Wake." The Good Loser Club's a loose and social ensemble that performs folk, country-rock, and gospel material suitable for weddings and funerals alike. (The Marks are former New York neighbors with whom I share a deep affection for underground Chicago country/dub-reggae ensemble Souled American.)
David Gans, Twisted Love Songs (Perfectible)
Most songwriters have but a single trick up their sleeve. This Bay Area performer, on the other hand, mixes his literate and well-crafted songs with heady instrumental loops that neatly blend the organic with the digital. David Gans's love songs are far cleverer than most: "Narcissistic cathexis is my ex's pathology/ She hooks 'em and she crooks 'em and she cooks 'em with impunity," he sings in "Desert of Love." And his social criticism lies somewhere between hippie optimism, barricades-manning rage, and Firesign Theater absurdity. In "Ran Into God," She bemoans, "Fundies with their undies in a permanent twist/ Don't they know the heathen have a right to exist?" (We've been pals ever since the Grateful Dead's publicist referred me to David for a story I wrote in 1987.)
Mr. Smolin, The Crumbling Empire of White People (Nomenclature)
Barry Smolin is a smart, hip Los Angeles high-school English teacher, and Crumbling Empire sounds very much like the sort of album Thomas Pynchon (or someone who's read him very carefully) might create. One tune goes, "I lost my heart to Mata Hari/ It cost a lot of vo-dee-o-do/ Like a cross between a safari/ And a rodeo." Produced (exquisitely) by Stew, Smolin (who, like David Gans, is a Grateful Dead-obsessed radio DJ) mixes cosmic conundrums with grassroots grievance. It's not for everyone, nor would he want it to be. (I've been known to turn to Barry for advice on the care and feeding of teenagers.)