Surrealistic cowboy poetry.\u00a0 Springsteen on mescaline.\u00a0 Steve Earle on a literary jag.\u00a0 Wilco with grit.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
These are but a few of the phrases that come to mind when listening to Mark McKay\u2019s latest batch of expansive, exotic Americana, urgent, whiskey-fed melodies topped with lyrics that often seem to consist of a string of vivid images and striking non sequiturs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Devil\u2019s in the voodoo \/ I got no money in the bank\u201d goes the chorus to the opener, and while I have no idea what the hell that\u2019s supposed to mean, it sounds<\/i> amazing, and the song that backs it is an earthy, chugging anthem, a tune that practically begs you to sing along to its inscrutable couplets.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe not what you wanted, maybe what you need\u201d sings McKay in the lilting, slightly wistful sophomore tune \u201cShimmer,\u201d and it seems to summarize a certain gut feeling that runs through this album, and indeed McKay\u2019s entire body of work.\u00a0 Nothing is quite what you expected, but you end up feeling like what you\u2019re getting is of exceptionally good quality.\u00a0 \u201cYou were wild,\u201d sings McKay, \u201cSo am I.\u201d\u00a0 Indeed.<\/p>\n
McKay also surely counts John Fogerty as one of his musical heroes; that much seems clear from the swamp-boogie undertones of the opening stanzas of \u201cMy Angel,\u201d at least before it drives forward purposefully into a rich and lovely chorus that delivers on every promise made by the first two verses.<\/p>\n
\u201cRevelation Man\u201d is a Dylanesque screed against following false prophets of all sorts, with the closing verse seemingly aimed squarely at Bushes junior and senior\u2019s Iraq fixation: \u201cSo the president called his father \/ And didn\u2019t really say that much to him \/ Quick hello, that\u2019s all \/ Nothin to the call \/ But a deep recognition of \u2018Daddy, I know you understand\u2019 \/ Gonna burn down that revelation land.\u201d<\/p>\n
Impressions from there\u2026 \u201cTariffville Town\u201d has a distinct Big Pink<\/i> feel with its mandolin, organ and rich country-fied harmonies.\u00a0 The loping, marching cadence of \u201cBullets\u201d matches up perfectly with the rather Johnny Cash charismatic-loner impressionist narrative \u2013 \u201cYour fear is a weapon that you\u2019ve become \/ You\u2019ve got bullets, barbed wire, now you\u2019re a gun\u2026 You can\u2019t turn back and you must press on.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\u201cHold Me Down\u201d assaults with heavy, almost grungy guitars and lyrics like \u201cthis death is sweetness\u201d \u2026 \u201cSick And Tired\u201d feels like a Springsteen mashup matching the music of \u201cPink Cadillac\u201d with the lyric to \u201cI\u2019m Goin\u2019 Down\u201d\u2026 \u201cBe Steady\u201d is an upbeat singalong featuring one of the strongest images on the album: \u201cThere\u2019s streaky daylight bleeding in the sky\u201d\u2026 and \u201cStumblestreets\u201d closes things out in fine fashion, a song full of ragged majesty and boldly sketched vignettes.<\/p>\n
Dakota Dust<\/i> is McKay\u2019s third studio album and finds him again teaming with Steve Earle sideman, guitarist and producer Eric \u201cRoscoe\u201d Ambel, a partnership that has now delivered two of the best alt-country disks of the past decade in this one and 2004\u2019s Shimmer<\/i>. The production manages to be full and raw all at once, and at times mirrors the approach Brendan O\u2019Brien has taken with Springsteen\u2019s last three albums.<\/p>\n
Speaking of influences, the beautiful trick that McKay pulls off again here is to take cues from each of his without ever imitating any of them; for all its obscure surrealism, McKay\u2019s artistic voice is both distinct and distinctly his own.\u00a0 It\u2019s like a Johnny Cash concert, a poetry slam and a dive into Monet\u2019s waterlily pond happening all at once in your head\u2026 big, rumbly and disorienting, but full of beauty and wonder as well. Dakota Dust<\/i> is an experience, and one you shouldn\u2019t miss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7028],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-42203","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-mark-mckay","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42203","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=42203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42203"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42203"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}