Daughn Gibson – All Hell LP (White Denim)
RECOMMENDED
I’m all for responsible recycling; seems like Daughn Gibson is as well. His record All Hell is a keeper built from spare parts, looking up out of the bottom of the bottle. The artist DG (don’t call him Josh) subverts every other joe out there who can merely write great country-cum-dark adult Americana songs by giving them the sample/cut/loop treatment from a collections’ worth of dusty, anonymous rummage sale/thrift store Christian rock and private press sources, instead of trying to play whatever melodies he could come up with in a traditional lineup. Sample-based artists are usually at their best when they work the palette afforded to them to establish a familiar mood, and Mr. Gibson (most recently the drummer of stoner rock trio Pearls & Brass, who was supposedly “converted” by electronic horror/afterlife works by Demdike Stare and Andy Stott while in the process of writing these songs) is able to do in a successful and unique fashion on each track here. He doesn’t need a band; he’s built his theatre up around him already, a collection of synthetic despair, minimal beats and crushed velvet delusion, and this allows him to concentrate solely on the performance. These are sad songs right down to their arrangements (and those samples make them even sadder), but he’s got zero problem giving them the delivery they need to shine. Whatever corniness there is to be gleaned out of the intro to “A Young Girl’s World” is immediately taken down by the placid doom of its louche rhythm and eerie, lounge-borne presence by way of that electric piano sample. Dude’s voice hovers around the lower registers of Scott Walker or Chris Isaak, maybe even Arthur Russell, and goddamn can he croon. At first I thought he had pitched his voice down, but the live show proved me wrong. And on that note, have you seen this guy? With his painted on workshirt and jungle-gym build? He is a HUNK. All of the women (and about half of the men) at the venue were swooning so hard that I nearly had a slip-and-fall after his recent set at Union Pool. There’s an urge to compare Gibson to one-man garbage machines like Dirty Beaches, as there could be a lot of arguments you could make against Gibson’s of music becoming accepted or successful, but they all fall flat – dude is The Real Deal, and he’s made a striking and indelible debut with All Hell, one which has eluded everyone else out there trying to make it all work. Whether he can withstand the way every carp in the music industry is trying to tear off a piece of him until he makes another one is wholly its own story, but we’ll wait for that one to play out. (http://whitedenim.com)
(Doug Mosurock)
