Dan Baker – Sad Song Junkie (2010)
mp3 VBR~230 kbps 67 MB (5% recovery inf.)
Folk, Singer-Songwriter, Indie Folk
I suspect that the title of Dan Baker’s second album describes an overwhelming number of the world’s music obsessives. If so, they will be well served by an immediate acquaintance with it as Baker, at times sounding uncannily like Mary Gauthier, mines the backstreets and byways of despair. Prison life (“365 Days”), alcoholism (“Martini”) and just plain old beaten down and battered-ness (“Weak Man”), all these are grist to Baker’s mill. His is the music that’s playing in Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks diner. Such a relentless catalogue of despair would tax even the most hardened addict but as the album progresses Baker lightens up a bit with the sensual “Little O Death”, a play on le petit mort, and the unbowed hope of “Day’s First Dream”.There’s truth here, truth and sadness and somehow some hope in Baker’s voice, no matter how dead end the circumstances about which he’s singing. These are seriously good songs too and, as he writes in “Corduroy”, “every note cries desperate passion”. Steel guitar slides like treacle across the bittersweet darkness of Baker’s world, which, while it may well be one we’d rather not inhabit, is illuminated to perfection here.
Tracks:
I suspect that the title of Dan Baker’s second album describes an overwhelming number of the world’s music obsessives. If so, they will be well served by an immediate acquaintance with it as Baker, at times sounding uncannily like Mary Gauthier, mines the backstreets and byways of despair. Prison life (“365 Days”), alcoholism (“Martini”) and just plain old beaten down and battered-ness (“Weak Man”), all these are grist to Baker’s mill. His is the music that’s playing in Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks diner. Such a relentless catalogue of despair would tax even the most hardened addict but as the album progresses Baker lightens up a bit with the sensual “Little O Death”, a play on le petit mort, and the unbowed hope of “Day’s First Dream”.There’s truth here, truth and sadness and somehow some hope in Baker’s voice, no matter how dead end the circumstances about which he’s singing. These are seriously good songs too and, as he writes in “Corduroy”, “every note cries desperate passion”. Steel guitar slides like treacle across the bittersweet darkness of Baker’s world, which, while it may well be one we’d rather not inhabit, is illuminated to perfection here.
Tracks:
01 Sad Song Junkie
02 365 Days
03 A Little Something
04 Martini
05 Weak Man
06 Look At Billy Run
07 Little O Death
08 Day’s First Dream
09 What Do They Know
10 Corduroy
