Johnny Dowd,
Cruel Words



Label: Bongo Beat Records

(4½ out of 5)

Given there's been nothing new under the rock 'n roll sun for decades, Johnny Dowd's Cruel Words is a brilliantly refreshing mélange of styles and sounds that combines Ian Drury & the Blockheads' dance-music driven, spoken-word poetry, Portishead's (British) West Coast trip-hop, and Medeski, Martin & Wood's Hammond B-3 and beat-happy improvised jazz. In borrowing so broadly and reinterpreting all he gathers though a cracked prism — shaped at least in part by his Fort Worth, TX and country and western roots — Dowd has created a uniquely challenging, captivating, and humorously macabre masterpiece.

Almost completely unrecognized in his own land, Dowd has been hailed as a rock 'n roll prophet by Europe's trendy youth and music journalists. In Britain, where his strongest influences hold most currency and his bitter sarcasm is perfectly in place, he's a borderline celebrity.

A first-rate guitarist himself, Dowd collaborates on Cruel Words with the equally gifted and experimentally oriented Brian Wilson (drums and bass pedals) and Mike Stark (keys). Together, and with help from a couple of guests, the trio has crafted an off-center sound that's simply not ready for American radio — and American radio is all the poorer for that. Released six months earlier in Europe than the States, it is a collection of 14 great songs that includes the sublimely masochistic "House Of Pain," the anti-war, anti-religion "Praise God," and as dark and original a take on Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" as you could ever imagine.

Had Dowd made a similar kind of album, with similarly strong tunes and a similar depth of lyrical insight as a high-school senior rather than a gray-hair senior entitled to a Denny's discount, he might have found an American audience among those who crowded into coffee shops to listen to the words of Kerouac and Ginsburg and the music of Seeger (Pete, not Bob) and Dylan. But in today's America, in which even the MTV that destroyed our musical taste buds no longer plays music, there's unlikely anything other than the smallest of audiences for what might be one of the most special albums in years. Cruel words perhaps, but Dowd is one Texan who might spend the rest of his career playing mostly to appreciative full houses in Northern Europe.

Reviewed by Adam Black
July 11, 2006