Have you ever had the experience of listening to an album that
\nwas so bad that you found yourself wishing for death to come so you
\ndidn’t have to listen to any more?<\/p>\n
You’re lucky; even if I think an album is the biggest slab of
\ntoxic waste to come from this side of Three Mile Island, I have to
\nlisten to
\nevery god-damned note<\/i>. And after going through the
\nexperience of sitting through an album by Johnny Dowd, I can
\nhonestly say that I would rather perform a home vasectomy by
\nremoving the grill from the hallway fan than sit through one more
\nlistening of
\nPictures From Life’s Other Side<\/i>, Dowd’s latest.<\/p>\n
Listening to this disc reminded me a lot of the first time I
\never heard Tom Waits. On first listen, I wondered who the hell
\nwould buy such cacophany. Over the years, though, my palate has
\nexpanded to the point where I recognize a lot of Waits’s work that
\nI like. There’s one difference between Waits and Dowd, though: I
\ndon’t see myself becoming endeared with Dowd down the road. It
\nwould kind of be like French kissing a live light socket.<\/p>\n
Dowd is a folk singer\/songwriter who couldn’t carry a tune even
\nif he had a bucket the size of New England. He tries to weave
\ntextures of vocal and sound into some of the songs, but the end
\nresult is like housepets being put into the blender.<\/p>\n
Sounds a bit harsh, doesn’t it? The first track off this disc, a
\ncover of Hank Williams’s “A Picture from Life’s Other Side,”
\nfeatures Dowd with so much twang in his voice that you’d swear he
\nwas just plucked from the plantation to sing this one. It literally
\nhurts the eardrums – and is not a good sign of things to come.<\/p>\n
To Dowd’s credit, there are moments where brief rays of hope
\nshine through. Tracks like “Hope You Don’t Mind” and “Wish I’d Been
\nHonest” dare to suggest that there might be method to the musical
\nmadness. Unfortunately, any hope you gain is quickly crushed.<\/p>\n
Tracks like “God Created Woman,” “The Girl Who Made Me Sick,” No
\nWoman’s Flesh But Hers” and “Ballad Of Lonnie Wolf” all help to
\nseal this disc’s fate. This disc is just unfocused, unpolished –
\nunlistenable.<\/p>\n
And if this isn’t insult enough to the listener, there’s a
\nhidden track on this one. One word:
\n
\nWHY?!?<\/i>
\n<\/b><\/p>\n
\nPictures From Life’s Other Side<\/i> is a painful listen that is
\nthe kind of disc you own only to put on when it’s time to get rid
\nof the company who won’t leave. In Dowd’s case, these
\nPictures<\/i> should have been “accidentally” destroyed by
\nFoto-Mat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7584],"rating":[11203],"class_list":["post-39411","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-johnny-dowd","rating-rating-d-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39411","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=39411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39411"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}