Nobody croons anymore. Nobody risks sounding like a threat to an insecure curmudgeon's stranglehold over the gal he so tenuously has because she couldn't find anyone better. Nobody cuts through the mystique of hipster fuck-off looks and lays their cards on the table in a naked display of vocal self-evisceration.
It takes balls to croon. It takes more balls to croon than it does to be GG Allen. The results can be catastrophic and you may never sing in this town again ... ever ... forever ... till the end of time ... and maybe a little after that, too.
Which brings us to Number 5 on our list.
Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele - "Meet Me In the Garden" The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele
Oh sure, he looks like the fucked up bastard love-child of an 80-year-old shaved James Hetfield and Elton John ... and he kind of sounds like a Samba-fan Kermit the Frog, come to think of it ... but, the irrefutable fact is that Dent May has "It." He has that "It" that the crooners of past and present have used as a weapon through the noise, high above the jealousy and beyond the grasp of the naysaying Cro-Magnons who haven't so much as won the heart of an audience - let alone a lady - with just the pureness of their voice.
The lyrics sound almost improvisational (kind of like Jens Lekman, who can also carpet a stage of gals' undergarments on command) as the Mississippi-born singer-songwriter paints a picture that comes across as pastoral-by-way-of-Crayola ("While all the birds and flowers will go in time / Tonight they're ours, Miss Caroliiiiiiine"), it is that simplicity that edges May past the cutesy irony-tinged bump of modern indie rock and morose condescension of indie folk.
While his "College Town Boy" would seem to be more politically and culturally important ("Get off your ass and do something"), we have the terseness of a million bad punk bands a shitty hip-hop acts to do that for us. Is it too much to ask for an artist that goes beyond contrivances and gives himself to an audience fully, completely and honestly?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment