I debated for a good half an hour whether to review this one myself or send it on to one of our staff writers.\u00a0 When new music comes in over the DV transom, I always try to match it with the person on our staff who I think is best equipped to appreciate it — and the gulf between middle-aged, suburban-dad me and twentysomething, gay, New York City singer-songwriter Jay Brannan is considerable.<\/p>\n
But to employ the obvious pun, Goddamned<\/i> if these songs didn\u2019t capture my attention.\u00a0 (I mean, let\u2019s face it — is there a more on-the-nose rhyme in the English language than \u201csuicidal\u201d and \u201cAmerican Idol\u201d?)<\/p>\n
Imagine a musical mind-meld of David Wilcox, John Hiatt and Lucinda Williams and you\u2019ve got a clue as to what Jay Brannan sounds like.\u00a0 Always sharply witty, often achingly poignant and at times laugh-out-loud funny, Brannan\u2019s songs capture moment after moment that feels devastatingly real.\u00a0 The instrumentation is basic folk, acoustic guitars and fiddle and the occasional piano and percussion, and Brannan\u2019s vocals have a clarity and richness that reminds me a lot of Wilcox.<\/p>\n
The quality of the songs is what makes this album special, though.\u00a0 Songs like \u201cCan\u2019t Have It All\u201d and \u201cHalf-Boyfriend\u201d present emotional dilemmas anyone can recognize — wanting more than you can have, and living through a torturous relationship limbo between friend and lover — from a perspective that\u2019s unfamiliar to many.\u00a0 But the perspective isn\u2019t what brings these songs to life — it\u2019s the richness of Brannan\u2019s storytelling and the sharp-eyed observations he delivers.<\/p>\n
\u201cA Death Waltz\u201d is sort of a portrait of the artist as a young death-obsessed neurotic, full of wonderfully acerbic lines like \u201cit’s 12 years later \/ I’m more of a child than I was back then.\u201d\u00a0 Things take a turn for the sunny with the sweet, rather James-Taylor-ish \u201cAt First Sight,\u201d and even moreso — for awhile — in the gorgeous \u201cHousewife.\u201d\u00a0 The latter song feels like a solid nominee for a gay marriage anthem right up until the twist Brannan throws in at the end.<\/p>\n
The title track is a song that\u2019s unlikely to win Brannan any friends in the religious community — an artful broadside against belief — but it\u2019s compellingly rendered and at its core at least as anti-war as it is anti-faith.\u00a0 A couple of other songs here — I\u2019m thinking particularly of \u201cBowlegged And Starving\u201d and \u201cOn All Fours\u201d — will similarly test their audiences\u2019 limits, but all three share a bracing, fearless honesty, and Brannan\u2019s acoustic leads on the latter tune are nothing short of superb.<\/p>\n
Goddamned<\/i> closes on a snarky note with the \u201cString-A-Long Song,\u201d a winding narrative full of sharp turns of phrase and self-lacerating commentary.\u00a0 Ouch, that hurt.\u00a0 But that seems to be somewhat of Brannan\u2019s point with this album: life is messy and painful and full of longing and absurdity, and part of the way you get through it is by laughing in the right places — and maybe crying in a few, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":29871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8391],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41490","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jay-brannan","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41490","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41490"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}