i have to say, with no small measure of regret, that i agree with most of the criticism. one of the best things about doughty's music, for me, is his lyricism. he writes like a poet (which he is), and the way he twines those words into the flow of his music is what makes his songs so interesting/entertaining/emotional/etc. that excellent lyricism is present on this album, though in shorter supply that in previous releases. i also like the extensive use of scat throughout the album; a lot of people seem to be knocking this (on "i just want the girl..." in particular), but i think it's cool. i think it fits, usually, with the type of music he writes.
what really gets me (or doesn't, i guess, would be more correct) on this album is the lack of intensity. the lyrics are there, the interesting song structures are there, there's even a song that could be a PG-rated soul coughing b-side ("more bacon than the pan can handle"). but it's all delivered (or produced, or both, i'm not sure) in a way that almost forces you to not care.
take, for example, the first track, "fort hood". you pop the CD in (in my case, i'm old school like that) and instantly mike's singing and doing his thing. this was jarring to me. i was waiting for at least a few bars of guitar chords before everything started. but no. instead, the song immediately jumps out of the starting gate. there's no ambiance, no lead-in. it felt really "top 40 radio" to me. the song itself - about fort hood, the military base which has lost the most personnel in the iraq war - is a good-bordering-on-great song. i've heard in-studio versions of this song done solo acoustic on the radio, and i like it. not love it, but like it. on the album it just sounds like pop. mike's singing about complacency complacently. it's frustrating. he's singing about how the soldiers should be at home enjoying their lives instead of dying in a pointless war, but it sounds like the whole thing is being baked in the easy-bake oven of music and that mike is reading off of a cue card. i wonder if the suddenness with which the album was made had something to do with this. i don't know.
the second track is neat. that's pretty much how i feel about it. it's a good song, it's catchy, it's interesting. it's like a piece of candy. you eat it - yum - and then you move on to something else. "27 jennifers" is good if you haven't heard it before; if you have, nothing's been done to it this time around that's going to rock your world.
honestly, the first five songs were songs that were either outright bland to me, or decent but that gave me the impression that they could have been better "if only" this or that. of course, that might just be my expectations getting in the way.
the rest of the album is better. "i wrote a song about your car" is another neat song. it's about liking a girl and stuff, but you get the impression that it's more about the fact that the song is supposedly about a car but actually isn't, and that's a gimmick worth exploring for the next four minutes of your life. everything else on the album is good, serviceable "small rock" with doughty's special lyrical touch. if you liked "haughty melodic" - and i loved it - you'll love this stuff.
i can't figure out what it is about the majority of this album that's throwing me. it almost seems like doughty was looking back at "haughty" and thinking "well, i did all those songs and 75 percent of it was good, but 25 percent of it could have been left unsaid", but then he turned around and took that 25 percent and accidentally built this album around it. i want to like these songs, but i don't like waiting 28 minutes for a 38 minute record to hit its groove. it seems like this album moved away even further from doughty's "skittish" and "rockity roll" sound and more into adult alt-rock territory. the thing about writing poems and then surrounding them with (mostly) cookie-cutter music is that, well, i'd honestly rather have just been sold the lyrics as poems and read them out of a book and said "sweet!"
i like soul coughing. a lot. i like mike doughty. a lot. i'm glad the guy isn't shooting up drugs anymore. this is a trend with a lot of the musicians i really value lately: doughty, tweedy, adams...sobriety is awesome. there is a contingent of music fans, though, who think that drug culture and rock and roll culture are inextricably intertwined: you can't make good rock without good drugs. i don't think this is true. living on the edge of personal destruction might let you make good music, but there are healthier ways to come up with good song ideas. just look at "easy tiger" or "sky blue sky".
my point is, i guess, that i miss the intensity of the songs from soul coughing records, or even from "skittish", or "rockity roll". or even a few bits and pieces of "haughty melodic", and i don't want this attitude to be misconstrued as "mike should be a crack head and make death metal music". he seems to have nearly completed the transition to radio-friendly folk-pop, and that seems to be working for him. he seems happy about it, according to his blog, and that's excellent. but i just find it a bit boring, and it's a little frustrating to get occasional glimpses now of a sound that was once shockingly unique.
mike doughty's "nectarine (part one)" from "golden delicious"
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