Blame Johnny Dowd.

To lose one self in art is the highest pursuit, the best benefit of the post Monkey brain pan we are all blessed / cursed with. (note: this applies to humans. If your a dog, stop reading this. It will freak your owner out and you’ll get no snausages. And isn’t all we beasts want out of life is more snausages?)

To lose one self is a powerful indictment when spoken about any record. Because our main responsibility is to NOT lose ourselves. It’s written into the biological imperative: Stay alive or lie down someplace that needs fertilizer. We must remain static to remain. Or static-y.

I have been subconsciously clicking the days that passed awaiting this new Johnny Dowd record ‘That’s Your Wife On The Back Of My Horse’. I wasn’t even aware I was doing it.

It’s a cosmic synergy that allows the perfect record to fall on the imperfect fan right when they need it. I have been a Johnny fan for a few years now, introduced by the Jim White film ‘Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus’ (required viewing if your going to read this with any regularity…I will refer back to it a lot and likely quiz.) And I first heard The Man warbling through a sub-field recording, but with current and dark, strange lyrics. It lead me to more records and deeper delightful weirdness.

And time passes and seasons change (poetic etc. etc.) and my ear wandered. I would always refer back to these records when I needed to be transported to someplace else entirely, someplace I don’t understand but got fleshy kicks from (my same definition of Love).

His records are unpredictable. Funny. Cocky. And oddly self conscious. Like the best things in life.

Some 4 months back I came across the fact a new album was coming. It was summer and I noted it with curious satisfaction and forgot it. I thought. But really….everything since then has led till this morning.

Strange. Beautiful. Bold. Darkly comic. Original. Lyrically challenging. Musically…..just fucking weird. But without question, funky. I’m no fan of the ‘Funk’. It’s not on my particular hit parade. Translated as Johnny does, it goes from music about dancing to music about getting drunk and falling in between the seats of someone’s car with some girl whose name your unsure of. Erotic, exotic stuff. And something I will stick my thumb out for, stranger danger or not.

‘That’s Your Wife On The Back Of My Horse’ is thematic in so much as it’s the stuff that fascinates Johnny. So that’s relationships, blaxploitation, sex, death and song. It’s a collection of weird electronics rhythms, Anna Coogan’s sly and perfect counter part to Johnny’s curmudgeon-with-a-heart-of-glass vocal style, and styles cribbed from a lifetime of living in NY State. It’s cold and bleak. But the bleakness is bountiful. It’s hot and cool.

And when listened to in the proper context (headphones, half stoned), it takes on the feeling of a soundtrack, and your the protagonist. The street pass by as Johnny describes whats going on behind the curling curtains of the classes. And whats usually going on is sex and money problems.

Step outside of your life and ride with Johnny’s ‘That’s Your Wife On The Back Of My Horse’. It will get you to where your going.

Which may be nowhere. http://www.johnnydowd.com/