Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly

February 27, 2008

Mike Doughty / Golden Delicious

ATO Records

If you’re a fan of the faux-soul stylings

of Donovan Frankenreiter, G Love or Mike

Doughty’s former band Soul Coughing,

you might enjoy this new album. Me? Not

so much.

Doughty is not without talent. He’s just

trying too hard here. One of the best songs

on this album, “I Got the Drop On You” finds

him singing intensely over a purely acoustic

track. On “Wednesday (Contra La Puerta)”

he dispenses with the overused hip hop

beats and goes for the jugular with a

passionate performance.

On “Fort Hood,” Doughty tells us about

veterans in airport lounges with “blanked-out

eyes” returning from the current war,

and then describes what the lives of these

scarred young people could have been

(“…you should blast Young Jeezy with your

friends in a parking lot”). He borrows the

chorus of “Flesh Failures (Let The Sunshine

In),” a touchstone of an earlier unpopular

war. It’s a moving juxtaposition.

Another issue I have with this album is

Doughty’s belief that he can replace

meaningful lyrics with nonsense syllables.

This technique has a long and storied

history in rock and roll, and it’s fine now

and then, but this album is way too full of

barump-a-dum-dums (“I Just Want The

Girl In The Blue Dress To Keep On

Dancing”), na-na-nas (“Put It Down”), and

ding-dada-dings (“Nectarine”).When I think

of the songwriters who labor over every

syllable, this seems like a cheap way out.

In a word: Ba-ba-ba

Grade: C

—by Ken Shane