Albums I Meant To Review in 2008: Mike Doughty's "Golden Delicious" is Both!
Written: Jan 16 '09
Product Rating:
Pros: It's shameless ear candy for grown-ups.
Cons: It would sound even better on the radio.
The Bottom Line: In which the author thinks that boy band hooks sound better sung by non-virginal middle-aged men with receding hairlines, who can convincingly wear shirts with epaulets.
plorentz's Full Review: Golden Delicious by Mike Doughty
Back when I was in college, there was this band called Soul Coughing. Though I’d never really listened listened to them (as opposed to being in a neighboring dorm room while somebody else was playing their debut 1994 CD Ruby Vroom), I decided that I probably didn’t like them based almost entirely on the fact that all the “cool” people couldn’t get enough of them. My presumptive dislike of Soul Coughing extended well beyond the receipt of my college diploma – extended well beyond the end of the band’s own existence to taint my impression of singer-songwriter M.(ike) Doughty, despite his occasional guest appearances on records by bands I did like (notably They Might Be Giants). But a picture is worth a thousand reconsidered opinions. In the case of Mr. Doughty, it actually took the 27 “Cherry Pie”-era yearbook pictures featured on the genius thumbnail art of his fall 2007 single “27 Jennifers” to grab my fickle attention, but since he grabbed it (and thanks to a well-timed promo copy of his third solo album Golden Delicious, from which “27 Jennifers” was taken, arriving in my mailbox), I’ve had a ravenous appetite for crow. Without breaking much of a sweat, the eleven songs that make up Golden Delicious make deliriously good on the promise of those two very promising adjectives.
If Doughty hadn’t already won me over with the retro-funky electric piano doodles and endearingly goofy lyrical Facebook-browsing of the record’s lead single, he certainly did by the time he reached the first chorus of album-opening “Fort Hood”, where, in the midst of declaring his druthers, Doughty falls back on the hippie wisdom espoused by the musical Hair: Let the sun shine- let the sunshine in. The song isn’t so much anti-war as it is pro-living, and sung in a shaggy, matter-of-fact rasp, it manages to convey both an appreciation for simple pleasures while also acknowledging the insanity of young people fighting a war at a time in their lives when they “should blast Young Jeezy with your friends in a parking lot”. “Fort Hood” doesn’t just establish Mike Doughty’s people-watching point of view, it exemplifies his simple and playfully intuitive songwriting style. Back when I was in college, “Let the Sunshine In” was a punchline and a cliché, but in “Fort Hood”, Mike Doughty makes the chorus poignant and, maybe more importantly, relevant in a way that it hasn’t been since the 60s. But, even setting its newfound relevance aside, it’s also just such a fun, singalong-able chorus, and the surprise of it showing up as the focal point of a Mike Doughty song in 2008 is like finding an unopened Christmas present from your childhood in the trunk of the Pontiac G6 you just bought off of Craigslist: impossibly random, and jump-for-joy wonderful.
While nothing else on Golden Delicious approaches that particular intuitive leap for sheer hopeful audacity (and really, how could anything?), each of these songs has a big, playful presence – an ambient alive-ness - that just sort of leaps out of the speakers and fills the room. At a time when a lot of songs you hear on the radio sound like they were produced entirely on a pimped-out laptop, these mostly upbeat folk-rock songs are not only soulful and rhythmic, but also emphatically organic and human, the happy byproducts of a great many afternoons, evenings, and late nights spent bumming around with friends and guitars. Still, while the arrangements feel spare and airy – mostly, it seems, just drums, strums, and Doughty’s warm, lovably homely voice - there are actually a lot of bells and whistles going off all around in these songs, little musical asides played on trombones, little textural embroideries played on retro keyboards, little sidelong nods to hip-hop.
Not unlike Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” (seriously!) – songs like “Nectarine” and “I Just Want the Girl in the Blue Dress to Keep on Dancing” get by almost entirely on the ad infinitum repetitions of heavy duty onomotopaeic hooks – ba-rump-dump-bum-bum – with some handclaps and almost subliminally snazzy sonic bling – a buzzing bassline stolen from a Neptunes production, and heavenly synth arpeggios from a vintage cinematic dream sequence - thrown in for good measure. Meanwhile the goofy honky hooks of “Put It Down” get fruitful and multiply all over the place – it’s the kind of dorky white boy party song (easy on the dorkiness) that Jason Mraz would sell his soul (and the souls of all his fans) to be able to come up with. By all means, Mr. Doughty, bottle up that sauce! Meanwhile “Wednesday (No Se Apoye)” has an almost tidal ebb and flow played out on toms – a heavy sense of romantic foreboding.
Credit producer Dan Wilson - formerly of Trip Shakespeare and Semisonic, who put out his own totally excellent solo album right around the time of Doughty’s – for the album’s generally impeccable balance of frivolity and restraint. For every jazzy dalliance (see “MoreBacon Than the Pan Can Handle”), there’s a moment of come-to-Jesus intimacy, as with the impossibly spare and impossibly beautiful “I Got the Drop on You”. If there were any justice in this world, songs like “Like a Luminous Girl” would occupy the Top 40 airtime currently devoted to Jesse McCartney songs – it’s at least as sweet and adorable a pop song as “How Do You Sleep”. In fact, I, right here and now, dare the former Dreamstreet heartthrob to cover this song on his next album. Of course, my own ears would miss the heartbreaking incongruity between the middle-aged-ness of Doughty’s voice and the earnest boy band yearning of his phrasing on the song’s chorus. (That, and Mike Doughty - unlike Jesse McCartney - is someone you could actually want to have sex with.)
In a sense, that’s what’s so wonderful about Golden Delicious: just how unabashedly ear-candy it all feels. It’s an almost uniformly upbeat album, perfectly paced for a quick-and-easy listen (and another, and another, and another) and loaded with the kind of immediately gratifying, never-get-old hooks that make you crave the album like [insert your favorite convenience store-bought snack here].
- - - - - BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
“Golden Delicious” by Mike Doughty ATO Records Released 2/19/08
Produced by Dan Wilson 37 min.
SONGS: Fort Hood – I Just Want the Girl in the Blue Dress to Keep On Dancing – Put It Down – More Bacon Than the Pan Can Handle – 27 Jennifers – I Wrote a Song About Your Car – I Got the Drop On You – Wednesday (No Se Apoye) – Like a Luminous Girl – Nectarine (Part One) – Navigating by the Stars at Night
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