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Daniel Johnston - Is and Always Was
Send "Daniel Johnston " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Drownedinsound |
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Writing about Daniel Johnston tends to fall into two categories, especially since the 2005 release of Jeff Feuerzeig’s outstanding documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston. First, there’s the 'it’s great to see him doing so well' camp, who undoubtedly mean well, but can’t help coming off as slightly patronising in their approach to his actual work. Then there’s the 'it’s not as good as it used to be' camp, who miss the tape hiss and red-raw production values of Daniel’s earliest recordings, ignoring the fact that he always had Beatles-sized ambition burning brightly in his eyes. That’s not to demean those early recordings — they are every bit as stunning, moving and emotionally redolent as the reams of text written about him suggest — but it would be churlish to expect Daniel to return there, especially as the elevation in his profile has given him another crack at delivering the songs as he always imagined them in his head. Fortunately, someone had the foresight to employ producer Jason Falkner (Paul McCartney/Beck) for Is and Always Was. Falkner manages to set up a sort of production halfway house, which raises everything out of the bedroom, but still burrows deep to the tender core at the heart of Daniel’s songs. The opening ‘Mind Movies’ is an actual, physical representation of the shift in standards. It begins with Daniel thrumming away at an acoustic guitar and singing about someone, surely himself, who makes “a lot of movies in your mind”. A warm and spacious organ is added a third of the way through, then drum rolls and a full band kick in before we head back to the stripped down beginning. It’s a neat way of ushering nervous longstanding listeners into this brave new world, whose natural reflex may have been to scurry back to a weatherworn Yip/Jump Music cassette if the country-fied slide guitar rock of ‘Freedom’ had been the opener....full text |
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| Popmatters |
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Daniel Johnston occupies an interesting place in popular culture. He became widely known from a t-shirt Kurt Cobain wore a lot in public in 1992, but had been plying his trade in the American indie music scene for about a decade by then. Releasing his mainly home recorded tapes (often with personalised, individually drawn artwork for each copy) into a listening public that was, by turns, enthralled (for the naive, songwriterly talent, the sincerity and awkward, insecure charm) or put off (by the heart-on-sleeveness, by the unabashed sentimentality), Johnston had attained a level of minor fame even before Cobain’s endorsement. MTV had showcased his raw talent, Sonic Youth had brought him to New York, and the indie rock community embraced the man, by and large, for his unique voice. However, the flipside of this was Johnston’s precocious mental state. This fact, and how it has been defined, and defined his music, has been a consistent thread throughout the three (broad) stages of his career. First: the early days of breaking out of Austin, Texas and getting exposed to the gaze of a television audience, singing about “living (his) broken dreams” and getting caught up in fame, getting frazzled on LSD, and having to take a lot of time out to cope with the resulting fractures. Second: the post-Kurt Cobain era, when he became swept up in the search for saleable authenticity that categorised grunge music. And third, the current stage: the generation who have come to know Johnston through the journalistic enthusiasm for his classic songwriting, through the mythmaking of the mentally troubled genius, through The Devil And Daniel Johnston‘s delving into his life’s story....full text |
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| Tinymixtapes |
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While many parallels have been drawn between Daniel Johnston and Brian Wilson, the comparison is only truly valid on the surface, chiefly in the struggle between balancing mental illness with musical genius. Deeper analysis, however, identifies profound differences between the two men and their work. For example, where hiatuses into seclusion (his bedroom) made Wilson lethargic and unprolific, such isolation allows Johnston to creatively thrive. Where Wilson required a lyrical foil to compose much of his best work (Tony Asher, Van Dyke Parks), Johnston does his best work alone. Where lush arrangements and production brought Wilson’s music to life, sparseness and bareness always defined Johnston’s masterpieces. But it’s in this last respect where the fundamental problem with his latest full-length offering, Is and Always Was, presents itself. Like his acclaimed drawings, Johnston’s music was startling in its superhuman simplicity. Seldom did he use any adornment other than a single accompanying instrument, which ranged from acoustic guitar to piano to chord organ (and sometimes none at all). His vocals exuded childlike wanderlust and woe over their subject matter, whether it was unrequited love, fulfilled dreams, pet cows, jelly beans, King Kong, or Casper the Friendly Ghost. But in the late 90s, he started playing with garage-rockers Danny and the Nightmares, which with mixed results lent a thorny edge to his music, at different times drowning and bolstering his strength of voice. Then, in 2003, with Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous producing, Johnston’s Fear Yourself, with its hazy instrumentation, represented a grand return to form. Listening now to Is and Always Was, 48-year-old Johnston’s first full-length of exclusively new material in seven years, leaves the same impression as albums like Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man or Tiny Tim’s Resurrection, where brilliant songcraft and lyricism falter under incongruent production and arrangements: “Without You,” an otherwise bittersweet ditty about moving on, is almost entirely diluted by giddy piano and synth overdubs, while “Queenie the Doggie,” a sweet rumination on an ailing pet, moves awkwardly like half-hearted calypso. Indeed, too often here the childlike charm and heart-wracking honesty that exists in all of Johnston’s music is squandered amid such noodling....full text |
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