Johnny Dowd - Pictures From Life's Other Side

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Free Music Notes for Pictures From Life's Other Side

Free Music Review: Songs For Swingin' (From A Noose) Lovers!
Hit: 5 Stars

Dowd seems to draw a lot of comparisons to Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits. In a way these are apt comparisons, especially Waits. But more than anything they are meant to indicate that the lesser known Dowd's work is equal to that of some our most respected singer/songwriters who are famous for dealing explicitly with dark themes. But where Cave, Cohen and Waits have established original and justly celebrated voices for themselves over decades of achievement, Dowd entered the music business with his first album in 1997 at the age of fifty. Making up for lost time, Dowd has recently released his fourth album, The Pawnbroker's Wife, while gaining a devoted following, touring and appearing on such worthwhile projects as the Bloodshot double cd as well as the recent Lee Hazelwood tribute album.

Pictures From Life's Other Side kicks off with the title track, perhaps the most creative reinterpretation of a Hank Williams, Sr. song ever released. It begins with Dowd as a sort of stoned carny inviting you over to his tent and as soon as you've settled into this landscape it veers off into an absolutely scorching rocker. At no point does this ever sound like a starched, reverent reading of a classic from our beloved Hank...and yet it captures his haunted spirit better than all but the great man's own recordings.

The one-two punch of I Hope You Don't Mind & God Created Woman are also standout tracks that serve as a perfect blueprint for Dowd's take on romance. The former is a sinsiter rewrite of the blues staple Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl. Except that this time all of the bluster has been violently stripped away and we are left in the profoundly uneasy company of an aged man who states his obsession with a child in the scariest terms imagineable.

God Created Woman is, love gone wrong subject matter aside, a far more gleeful affair. Kim Sherwood Caso's contributions to Dowd's music simply cannot be overstated. Her voice compliments his world view to a tee while providing a welcome counterbalance at the same time. Here she sings a desperate plea for her lover to "meet me in the parking lot/up on level three/there's something I must show you/there's something you've just got to see." These lines, as sung by Caso, are filled with an ache so unfathomable that it has folded into a detached, narcotic drone and listening to it gives you a palpable sense of danger. The person who is singing this is capable of awful things.

Another revelatory track is the spoken word performance of No Woman's Flesh But Hers. All I can say is that I honestly thought I was going to have to sleep under my bed with the lights on after hearing this the first few times. No song has ever scared me as badly. I loved it!

Pictures From Life's Other Side isn't as consistent as Temporary Shelter (my favorite) or as varied as The Pawnbroker's Wife but it is an important step in the development of one of the most interesting and talented artists to emerge on the music scene in the past ten years. You may have to do some work to eventually sink into his world, but it is an incredibly rewarding adventure I promise you!

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