Cruel Words
Johnny Dowd
(Bongo Beat)
I knew I would like Johnny Dowd. His latest disc came on recommendation to me from a publicist (don't laugh) whose taste in music I almost always agree with, and the fact that he is frequently described as an "alt-country" artist put him, I thought, firmly in place for my ongoing love affair with American roots music. So it came as no surprise that I liked Johnny Dowd; just about from the moment I heard him, in fact. What did throw me for a loop was how much I liked him, and for what reasons.
First, let's get this out of the way: Johnny Dowd has about as much in common with American roots music as Beck has with old-time rock'n'roll, and his classification as "alt-country" has everything to do with how absurdly wide one's own definition of "alternative" is. You might not know it from looking at the unassuming cover art, but Cruel Words is a veritable Pandora's Box of labyrinthine jazz, frenetic post-punk and hard-hitting metal, where genres are jumped and collapsed at the shrug of a shoulder, often several times in the same song. Sure, it's all sung with a Southern accent, and Dowd's lyrics are concerned almost exclusively with the misfits and losers on the margins of American life; but these tenuous connections aside, Cruel Words is about as far from traditional honky-tonk country as you can get without employing a drum machine (oh, wait...there is a drum machine on a couple of tracks). And let me tell you, it threw me for a loop. I came in expecting George Jones - albeit with a visage more like Jim Jarmusch's. What I got instead was some kind of alternate-dimension Devo from below the Mason-Dixon line.
Good thing, too, because as pleasant as another alt-country record would have been, Johnny Dowd's newest offering makes for the kind of glorious "what the hell is this?!" musical experience that's all too rare these days. Opening track "House of Pain" sets the tone, with blasts of overdriven guitar and Dowd's own quavering, Texan Lou Reed speak-sing vocals relating the story of a frustrated cowboy who decides to shoot off his own testicles. And then he's off, hooking us in with more gallows humor and even more restless musical acrobatics. "Miracles Never Happen" references Junior Parker via Elvis while shaking its fist at the heavens, and "Praise God," with its glibly-delivered monologue by a formerly jingoistic, now wheelchair-ridden Iraq War veteran, resembles a Bruce Springsteen song ghostwritten by Iggy Pop. "I don't care," Dowd spits on the chorus. "I'm in a wheelchair!"
Through it all, the connective tissue between disparate songs and styles is a kind of bristling, all-consuming, often morbid sense of rage. Dowd's anger manifests itself against targets both societal (the working-class rant "Anxiety") and individual (the jilted-man complaint "Unwed Mother"); his concerns are often existential ("Ding Dong"'s funeral ruminations), and occasionally hallucinatory (the stream-of-consciousness woman-troubles hysteria of "Corner Laundromat"). And most of the time, like any of rock's great anger merchants, he's at his best when he's at his maddest - certainly Dowd has his way around a venom-soaked turn of phrase, as lines like "Poverty House"'s "love can be so beautiful, like Jesus on the cross" amply demonstrate. But it's the very issue of Dowd's rage - his Cruel Words, if you will - that brings up one of my few misgivings with this album. Simply put, if Dowd's more apparently confessional songs draw from personal experience, then one feels almost sick listening to them for pleasure. And by that same logic, if Dowd is the one inventing these stories, for his own pleasure and for ours, then isn't he sick, too?
It's a question, granted, that won't affect the joy of a casual listen or three; after all, if Dowd's domestic nightmare "Cradle of Lies" sounds like something out of a JT Leroy novel, then plenty of other songs remain equally harrowing while delivering a (somewhat) lighter-hearted side of black comedy. Take "Drunk," for example, where Dowd follows up troublingly desperate observations ("the razor, it's tempting / if you have not been blessed / and in your own body you feel like a guest") with a shambling, tongue-in-cheek sinner's gospel chorus ("oh, what I'd give for a drink"). The juxtaposition is as darkly funny as it is squirm-inducing. But at the same time, it's one of those moments when you're unsure whether Dowd - a fifty-something musical misfit for whom a cult following would probably be the apex of his career - is playing authentic outsider music, or whether he's just an insider pretending to play outsider music.
In the end, though, does this question really matter? Whether Johnny Dowd's lyrical demons ring uncomfortably true to the listener, or just as uncomfortably false - for me it's both, depending on the song - his musical inventiveness is undeniable. And assuming for a moment that he really is as troubled as he seems, one has to guess that his music grants a sort of catharsis; this is his sixth album since 1998, after all, and if the guy still hasn't done himself in, then he must be doing something right. Fact is, if the closing track is any indication (a cover of "Johnny B. Goode" with Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" riff grafted onto the finale), he even seems to be having fun in the process. So don't shed any tears for Johnny Dowd, at least not yet. Just sit back and enjoy one of the weirdest, wildest and most wonderful records of 2006 - even if it does make you grimace a little.
Official Site
Buy It on Amazon
See Also: the outsider music conundrum
(Bongo Beat)
I knew I would like Johnny Dowd. His latest disc came on recommendation to me from a publicist (don't laugh) whose taste in music I almost always agree with, and the fact that he is frequently described as an "alt-country" artist put him, I thought, firmly in place for my ongoing love affair with American roots music. So it came as no surprise that I liked Johnny Dowd; just about from the moment I heard him, in fact. What did throw me for a loop was how much I liked him, and for what reasons.First, let's get this out of the way: Johnny Dowd has about as much in common with American roots music as Beck has with old-time rock'n'roll, and his classification as "alt-country" has everything to do with how absurdly wide one's own definition of "alternative" is. You might not know it from looking at the unassuming cover art, but Cruel Words is a veritable Pandora's Box of labyrinthine jazz, frenetic post-punk and hard-hitting metal, where genres are jumped and collapsed at the shrug of a shoulder, often several times in the same song. Sure, it's all sung with a Southern accent, and Dowd's lyrics are concerned almost exclusively with the misfits and losers on the margins of American life; but these tenuous connections aside, Cruel Words is about as far from traditional honky-tonk country as you can get without employing a drum machine (oh, wait...there is a drum machine on a couple of tracks). And let me tell you, it threw me for a loop. I came in expecting George Jones - albeit with a visage more like Jim Jarmusch's. What I got instead was some kind of alternate-dimension Devo from below the Mason-Dixon line.
Good thing, too, because as pleasant as another alt-country record would have been, Johnny Dowd's newest offering makes for the kind of glorious "what the hell is this?!" musical experience that's all too rare these days. Opening track "House of Pain" sets the tone, with blasts of overdriven guitar and Dowd's own quavering, Texan Lou Reed speak-sing vocals relating the story of a frustrated cowboy who decides to shoot off his own testicles. And then he's off, hooking us in with more gallows humor and even more restless musical acrobatics. "Miracles Never Happen" references Junior Parker via Elvis while shaking its fist at the heavens, and "Praise God," with its glibly-delivered monologue by a formerly jingoistic, now wheelchair-ridden Iraq War veteran, resembles a Bruce Springsteen song ghostwritten by Iggy Pop. "I don't care," Dowd spits on the chorus. "I'm in a wheelchair!"
Through it all, the connective tissue between disparate songs and styles is a kind of bristling, all-consuming, often morbid sense of rage. Dowd's anger manifests itself against targets both societal (the working-class rant "Anxiety") and individual (the jilted-man complaint "Unwed Mother"); his concerns are often existential ("Ding Dong"'s funeral ruminations), and occasionally hallucinatory (the stream-of-consciousness woman-troubles hysteria of "Corner Laundromat"). And most of the time, like any of rock's great anger merchants, he's at his best when he's at his maddest - certainly Dowd has his way around a venom-soaked turn of phrase, as lines like "Poverty House"'s "love can be so beautiful, like Jesus on the cross" amply demonstrate. But it's the very issue of Dowd's rage - his Cruel Words, if you will - that brings up one of my few misgivings with this album. Simply put, if Dowd's more apparently confessional songs draw from personal experience, then one feels almost sick listening to them for pleasure. And by that same logic, if Dowd is the one inventing these stories, for his own pleasure and for ours, then isn't he sick, too?
It's a question, granted, that won't affect the joy of a casual listen or three; after all, if Dowd's domestic nightmare "Cradle of Lies" sounds like something out of a JT Leroy novel, then plenty of other songs remain equally harrowing while delivering a (somewhat) lighter-hearted side of black comedy. Take "Drunk," for example, where Dowd follows up troublingly desperate observations ("the razor, it's tempting / if you have not been blessed / and in your own body you feel like a guest") with a shambling, tongue-in-cheek sinner's gospel chorus ("oh, what I'd give for a drink"). The juxtaposition is as darkly funny as it is squirm-inducing. But at the same time, it's one of those moments when you're unsure whether Dowd - a fifty-something musical misfit for whom a cult following would probably be the apex of his career - is playing authentic outsider music, or whether he's just an insider pretending to play outsider music.
In the end, though, does this question really matter? Whether Johnny Dowd's lyrical demons ring uncomfortably true to the listener, or just as uncomfortably false - for me it's both, depending on the song - his musical inventiveness is undeniable. And assuming for a moment that he really is as troubled as he seems, one has to guess that his music grants a sort of catharsis; this is his sixth album since 1998, after all, and if the guy still hasn't done himself in, then he must be doing something right. Fact is, if the closing track is any indication (a cover of "Johnny B. Goode" with Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" riff grafted onto the finale), he even seems to be having fun in the process. So don't shed any tears for Johnny Dowd, at least not yet. Just sit back and enjoy one of the weirdest, wildest and most wonderful records of 2006 - even if it does make you grimace a little.
Official Site
Buy It on Amazon
See Also: the outsider music conundrum
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