a coherent collection of random statements regarding God, words and tunes

Posted by: burninglight at 16:55 | link | comments
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Excuse me, driver...

    Seldom have I approached an album with this much trepidation.

      I'll try to keep this simple (but won't): The Lost Dogs started as a one-off collaboration in the early '90s by a number of Christian alt-rock giants (or at least shoulda-been giants) -- Terry Taylor of Daniel Amos (go HERE once more for more effusion about how I feel about Terry's '80s/'90s songwriting output), the brilliant gut-level songwriter/guitarist Mike Roe of the 77s, the late great Gene Eugene of the tortured and funky Adam Again, and Derri Daugherty of The Choir (who I will fight otherwise intelligent listeners about to the death, but hey, they're the ones with the Grammy nomination -- which confirms both our respective suspicions). 

      Anyway, that purported one-off, Scenic Routes, should be in every household in America. It's Americana the way it was meant to be played, and the last four songs in particular ("Smokescreen"/"The Last Testament of Angus Shane"/"Hard Times Come Again No More"/"Breathe Deep (the Breath of God)" are life-changing-good in and of themselves. As should the following album, the more rocking tour-de-force Little Red Riding Hood. Green Room Serenade (the Green Room being Gene's studio) was even more rocking but also considerably more disjointed. Gift Horse was a more unified album, no doubt due to all the songs being Terry's. If a wee bit inconsistent quality-wise, it nonetheless yielded some of their best songs, including "Ghost Train to Nowhere," "A Vegas Story (Free Drinks and a Dream)" and especially the rollicking yet earth-shatteringly profound "Loved and Forgiven."

      And then, Gene died, at the age of 39. At that intersection, some very different turns occurred. 

     For Mike Roe, every indication has been -- both in terms of comments made at the time and by the music produced since -- that Gene's death was a wake-up call of the highest order. Although output has been sporadic at times, the last half-dozen years have seen some great stuff, including the best 7s album to date (A Golden Field of Radioactive Crows, including the remarkable mourning-turned-celebration "Related") and the best album of 2004 (IMHO), Mike & bassist Mark Harmon's Fun with Sound.

     Terry Taylor has been another matter. The initial post-Gene salvo was the last Daniel Amos album, Mr. Buechner's Dream. Speaking of tours-de-force -- a double album that sounds for all the world like a greatest-hits album, in every sense of the term, both good and bad. That said, Disk 1 alone is worth the price. 

     From there, Terry released the solo country-ish Avocado Faultline, which intentionally or not reminds me exactly of Springsteen's The Ghost of Tom Joad -- i.e, sounds like the guy repeatedly read a book and then wrote a song about it. Well crafted and emotionally unengaging. And yes, I know it's got "Papa Danced on Olvera Street," which Terry wrote for his dying dad. At the same time, there's a certain detachment/sentimentality here and going forward, where I can understand how the writer feels but he doesn't make me feel it. (BTW, Tom Joad was the last Springsteen album I threw down for. And I'm more likely to pull that one out again than I am Avocado Faultline.)      

     Anyway, several other side and/or "goof" EPs later (the best of the bunch being the hit-and-miss but at least promising EP Little, Big), and a gig writing tunes for Nickelodeon's "Catscratch" (glad he's got a steady gig, but it sounds exactly like every other "cartoon music" out there and nothing like the truly unique video-game music he created that was released as Imaginarium), it's been diminishing returns for quite some time now.

      Um, driver....

      And so, back to the Dogs. Gene's departure was most strongly felt on the first album without him, Real Men Cry -- not only because he was so predominantly on the remaining bandmembers' minds, but because without his production hand the thing sounded completely sterile and useless (a fact further illustrated on the Via Chicago DVD -- absolutely buy this if you can still find it -- where the live version "In the Distance" can still reduce me to tears). 

     Also (cue the ominous music here), the "schtick" -- i.e., the deliberately self-effacing, repetitive and increasingly unfunny cowboy act -- begins making its onerous appearance with this album. (And don't get me wrong -- Terry and especially Mike can be very naturally funny guys. Mike's "taquito" rant on Via Chicago, as one example, is not to be missed. But there's naturally funny and there's "schtick.")

     It took another couple years to get to Nazarene Crying Towel, but you shouldn't. Virtually schtick-free. A quiet, earnest, coherent, and honestly worshipful record. Not on the level of the first two Dogs albums, but holds its own with Gift Horse quite easily. They could've continued down this road for the next 20 years and I'd've been great with it.

      But they didn't. The last three years have given us Mutt -- the Dogs doing material from their other bands... um, Doggy-style. A schtickfest that did nothing to improve on the originals and even made you cringe on occasion. Followed by Island Dreams, wherein the schtick went Hawaiian (you can't make this up) -- aside from a couple pretty instrumentals (and most of it IS instrumental, by the way), largely (and thankfully) forgettable.

      And so we come to the present. I needed some serious convincing to throw down for the new one, The Lost Cabin and The Mystery Trees. (Sorry, no image to rip off from Google today.) And the usual trumpeting from the usual corners wasn't gonna get it done (because hey, we all wanted to believe our heroes wouldn't give us Real Men Cry, Mutt and Island Dreams either, and sang THEIR praises for the first month or two before finally facing reality). 

      What finally got me over the hump was Andre's review in Tuesday Morning 3 a.m (http://www.tm3am.com/article_060712.htm). You can read it first, if you like.... I won't mind. I'll wait right here....

      .....

      .....

      Finished? OK, let me resume, then....

     Let's start with the good news: The Lost Cabin and The Mystery Trees is easily the best-produced album the Dogs have done since Gift Horse, and arguably ever. (Credit new official Dogs member and long-time Choir perpetrator Steve Hindalong for that, at least.) And likewise, Terry sounds the most vocally engaged he has in that same amount of time (Nazarene Crying Towel notwithstanding). And it's nice to see two other DA alumni in the credits -- bass mammoth Tim Chandler and original guitarist Jerry Chamberlain. (Signs of a possible DA reunion? Probably not, from indications elsewhere, but who knows?) 

     Heck, I'll go one step further and agree with Andre on this point: I'm pretty sure this is, in fact, as good as it will get for the Dogs at this stage of their union.

     Now, let's head directly to the middle -- or the fair and balanced, as it were: In this album's best moments, it shines like Gift Horse production-wise and reads/plays like Avocado Faultline.

     Based on that past sentence alone -- as again, this is the purely objective part -- you can ignore the rest of this review and make your own decision. The rest of this is strictly for me.

     Driver? Um, driver?

    So let's go ahead and bring this home:

     For everything right and everything wrong with this album, one needs go no further than the opener, "Broken like Brooklyn." An atmospheric opening that would make Bono jealous leads into a song that fits squarely into the Dogs pantheon of the past half-dozen years (and the vocal line even hints melodically at the classic "Built for Glory, Made to Last" from Scenic Routes), including the following verses:

Blonde girls in bikinis and snow skis,
in the desert, cashed in their chips
then filled the Rose Bowl with guacamole --
we took our clothes off and went for a dip
Bobbed and weaved like old Trolley-Dodgers
after reading a policeman his rights
Then we followed the Duke of Flatbush
and scaled the Boyle Heights

Woke up broken like Brooklyn
the year The Bums left
in The Bronx on a cold day
while our boys tan out west
Always broken like Brooklyn
after losing the best

      Get it? Chips -- guacamole -- dip? "Trolley-Dodgers" -- Brooklyn?

     Now, lots of people could well point out the considerable wordplay in that verse, and I guess the effort is commendable for that. It's clever and well-assembled. It's fair to say that Terry's putting his best efforts into this.
     But you notice something else? Yeah, that empty "so what does this mean to me?" feeling. Get used to it.

     Um, driver?

     "Devil's Elbow" is a fairly catchy tune that owes a lot to "Boomtown" from Terry's earlier and truly peachy-keen solo album John Wayne (although, for provenance reasons not worth detailing, it sounds like the song might actually date from that period as well). The title song that follows is also pleasant, and if y'r a fan of the post-Gene Dogs you'll like this too.

     With the quiet Daugherty/Hindalong song "Whispering Memories," I begin checking out mentally. And truthfully, Mike sounds kind of checked-out on his one song, "One More Day." (And I promise to try not to transfer this feeling to the next Mike/7s project next time -- just sayin'.) It doesn't get better with the increased schtick factor on "This Business Is Going Down," nor with the Mike-doing-Terry-doing-Mike-and-dang-straight-it-loses-something-in-translation "Hardening My Heart."

     Then there's the mini-cowboy-opera "Only One Bum in Corona Del Mar." This is just a seriously dumb song. It's also the longest. Enough said.

     DRIVER!!!

     What then follows is "Get Me Ready," an incongruous gospel rocker. Maybe on another album this works a little better, but given the cowboy schtick elsewhere, and especially coming off "Corona Del Mar," I'm even more lost.

     "Burn It Up" -- I cannot listen to this without thinking of those "plug it in, plug it in" Glade commercials, and it's about as exciting. Burn it up, indeed. I'll bring the matches.

     The closer, "That's Where Jesus Is," is probably the most on-target, accessible song on the album, if still a bit uncharacterisially preachy and all-too-predictably schticky in the process. But if this is your first experience, by all means sing along:

He don't hug trees or kill 'em
Or drive a particular car
Won't help you write a big hit song
Don't care how good lookin' you are
And Jesus won't be voting
He's not your party crashin' dog in this fight
Not a fan rootin' for your home team
Don't insure that your future is bright

That's Jesus in the homeless faces
With the junkies in their livin' hell
That's Jesus with the drunks and in the lonely places
The rest homes and prison cells
That's where Jesus is
Where we ought to be
Here's where Jesus works
Inside you and me
With the folks with AIDS
And the suffering kids
That's where Jesus hangs
That's where Jesus is

     That said, the Dogs and/or their respective components have done this theme literally hundreds of times, and in most cases, have done it in a more compelling and original manner. It's pleasantly catchy, but: Too little, too late. And I'm pretty sure this is, in fact, as good as it gets.

      FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! DRIVER!

      Um, yes, driver... you've already passed my stop.... That's OK, I'll just get off and walk from here. 

     Thanks again for the ride. But it's really time for me to get off.

Posted by: burninglight at 18:25 | link | comments (6)
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