Somehow I’ve wound up listening to records by characters from deep in my past. On this episode we have M. Doughty (having grown back his first name, Mike), the former front man and driving force of slacker jazz scenesters Soul Coughing.
Let’s be clear: I love Soul Coughing. Ruby Vroom is positively brilliant; its awkward rhythms, squawking trumpets, big slappy bass, sudden moments of lullaby softness, and raw imagist lyrics (all distilled from an incredible bouliabaise of narcotics and hallucinogens) is, in my mind, one of the most unique and amazing sounds of the 90s. When they collapsed in a drug-addled pit of hating each other in 2000 I felt like I’d lost an old and dear friend.
Doughty lost very little time in the wake of Soul Coughing’s death. Only weeks after getting dropped by Warner Brothers for having broken up the band he kicked heroin, rented a car, and toured 9,000 miles supporting his self-release, Skittish (much of this is detailed in his excellent autobiography, The Book of Drugs).He then spent about two years, off and on, recording Haughty Melodic, his first full-length for Dave Matthews’ ATO Records.
It’s a good sounding record. A mixing point between Doughty’s stripped, one-man acoustic work on Skittish and the jazzed-up Soul Coughing, Melodic blends layer after layer onto each track. The groove is slightly above mid-tempo, carried mostly by a tightly-strummed acoustic and the best snare sound I’ve heard in years. It’s production is top notch; you can hear every inch of this record from the burbles of sax buried low in the mix to the widest stretch of multi-tracked vocals (Dan Wilson of Semisonic manned the knobs). Rick Rubin could learn a lot from this recording.
It’s clear, though, that Doughty found a sweet spot and decided to keep riding it. Sonically, that spot is somewhere around the first Dave Matthews album, minus the fiddle and the wanking but adding a bit more funk in the bass (and oh god, that snare!). That’s not inherently a negative statement, either. Haughty Melodic carries itself like it knows what it’s doing; it’s a craftsman’s record, with enough time taken on it that every little snaggly bit got sanded. Doughty’s vocal delivery is uncomplicated, personable. It’s nice to see him dropping the half-spoken style he perfected in Soul Coughing and moving into real singing, since his voice is actually rather pleasant.
The downside, of course, is a bit of sameness. I know, it’s become my mantra. But seriously, a record CAN have a tight, cohesive sound without having just ONE sound. Look at Pretty Hate Machine, God Fodder, Imperial Bedroom, the self-titled Clutch album. Sure, those are truly great and iconic albums. But is it really that hard to listen to what you’ve recorded and say, “You know, we should mix it up a bit?” I’d like to hear a sound record that isn’t a single unified feel from front to back.
That being said, some of the songs on Haughty Melodic are really, really good. The opener, “Looking at the World From the Bottom of a Well” is a peppy, jangly, hitting-all-the-right-combos pop song crafted to explode on alternative radio (and it did, albeit briefly). ”Busting Up a Starbucks”, while mired in a repetitive chorus and pedantic anti-WTO lyrics has a wonderful groove to it, and a subtle layering of a brilliant sax solo just under the guitar in its coda. The biggest mover is probably “Grey Ghost”, Doughty’s tribute to his deceased friend Jeff Buckley; it’s tender without being cloying, a fond remembrance that fails to become sentimental. The rest of the record is really just a bunch of songs, but good sounding ones that could be standout tracks on a record that wasn’t as well-crafted.
At the end of the day, Haughty Melodic almost filled the spot that Soul Coughing left in my heart. But even with the familiar voice and his flashes of brilliance, Doughty just doesn’t quite have the edge he once did. I kept wanting it to veer off into some stuttering, shambolic riff from the depths of acid space. Instead, all I got was a pretty good alterna-pop record.
Final Grade: 89.5. Haughty Melodic sits just on the borderline of B+ and A-, being solidly good throughout but bordering on being very, very good. ”Busting Up a Starbucks” and “Grey Ghost” are mandatory (for the music and the lyrics, respectively), but the rest of it won’t make you unhappy at all.
Your Shitty Record Won't Review Itself 