My first real taste of Kevn Kinney and his music was,
\nsurprisingly, not with his band drivin’ n cryin’. Instead, it was
\nduring a set on a syndicated program of acoustic music. Kinney and
\nR.E.M.’s Peter Buck sat in the studio and cranked through two or
\nthree songs off Kinney’s debut solo effort
\nMacdougal Blues<\/i>.<\/p>\n
I have since lost the CD which has those performances, but a few
\nmonths ago, I happened to stumble upon a used copy of the album,
\nand decided to pick it up and give it a nostalgic listen.<\/p>\n
Kinney is not the greatest singer in the world – and I somehow
\nthink that he would be the first to support that claim. But his
\nstyle of songwriting reminds me of a cross between R.E.M. (who, not
\nsurprisingly, would partially adapt this style for
\nOut Of Time<\/i>), the Grateful Dead and Matthew Sweet. It’s an
\ninteresting combination of humor, bleakness, folk, country and rock
\n– and, for the most part, it works.<\/p>\n
The title track – God, listen to the stream-of-consciousness
\nstyle that Kinney delivers his vocal lines in, and tell me that you
\ndon’t hear Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do”. (Crow should write a
\nthank-you note to Kinney for this.) The song is a darkly humorous
\npicture of trying to become part of a scene that, for the most
\npart, doesn’t exist in the manner that you thought it did.<\/p>\n
Kinney’s folksy side comes through in both the dark, depressing
\nnumbers (“Not Afraid To Die”) and the light, airy mandolin-laden
\nsongs (“Last Song Of Maddie Hope”). Both of these particular songs
\nare addictive – I found myself travelling in my car with nothing
\nbut this tape for about three days. Sue Kinney (his wife?) adds
\nharmony vocals to three songs – and her vocals are what make “Iron
\nMountain” so calming and powerful.<\/p>\n
This isn’t to say that there aren’t missteps on
\nMacdougal Blues<\/i>. “Gotta Get Out Of Here” is a big one – and
\nthis is the song that I hear future R.E.M. references in. (It’s
\nworth noting that Buck and bandmate Mike Mills do add their talents
\nin certain areas of the album, including Buck’s production. Also,
\n“The House Above Tina’s Grocery” is a track that could have been
\nleft off.<\/p>\n
But for the most part,
\nMacdougal Blues<\/i> is an album that I don’t think got the kind
\nof attention and praise that it deserved when it came out in 1990.
\nKinney might not have gotten rich off of this album, but he
\nhopefully realizes that this one album captures the spirit of
\nalternative and folk almost perfectly – and it should be revered as
\na bruised classic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7252],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-38673","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-kevn-kinney","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38673"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}