1 OVERWHELMING UNDERWHELMINGNESS.
The first time I heard Luke Doucet was at the old Ted's Wrecking Yard. He was playing with his Vancouver-based band, Veal, a bizarrely tight punkish outfit that came onstage, played three songs and literally blew their amps and so had to stop playing. Those three songs were pretty brilliant though, brilliant enough to lead me to buy all of their albums off of the merch table on my way out.
Listening to the albums I recognized a couple of the songs -three of them anyway- but found the albums strangely weak and lifeless. No zip. No pop. Some decent songwriting, but otherwise...
In 2001 Doucet had relocated to Toronto and struck out on his own. He released Aloha, Manitoba, an incredibly written and performed album of character sketches and slices of life. For years Aloha, Manitoba maintained a spot in my music-listening rotation.
Three years later he released a fairly blah album of unreleased and live tracks called Outlaws... The arrogance of releasing an album of unreleased tracks after you've only put out one album notwithstanding, Outlaws was pretty lame. Two years later he put out Broken (and Other Rogue States) which was also not very good.
The common weakness on all of these albums wasn't the songwriting per se, nor the playing -Luke Doucet can play- but the production. Where Aloha, Manitoba sounded like the work of a hungry singer-songwriter with something to say, what's come since has sounded largely like the work of a producer, and quite frankly one that's not much more than just competent.
His albums sound clean and slick, everything fitting together seamlessly the way it should, I suppose... But he polishes the songs to within an inch of their lives, cutting out all of their edge with laser-like precision. He's produced a couple of decent but lifeless-sounding albums for NQ Arbuckle and one for his girlfriend-now-wife Melissa McClelland -who might just be the most beautiful woman on the Toronto music scene- that quite frankly is awful. What they all have in common is blandness.
The only real conclusion to come to when faced with all of this evidence is this:
Luke Doucet is not a particularly strong producer.
2 NOT RICH, BUT LUKE WARM.
2008, Doucet is back with Blood's Too Rich, his new album with his new band The White Falcon, which features his wife Melissa McClelland, who might just be the most beautiful woman on the Toronto music scene.
Will this be another slice of weak-kneed lifeless country rock, or a return to the days of wonder represented by Aloha, Manitoba?
I can't even fake cuteness here, nor hold off just laying it out in plain English:
This is not a very good album.
In fairness, it's not a very bad album either. It's worse: It's middling. It's wholly mediocre.
I wish it weren't. I wish Luke Doucet had redeemed himself, and reclaimed his place next to the likes of Danny Michel and Shannon Lyon as one of the bright lights in Canadian music, a songwriter of the first order. But he hasn't. He's merely reiterated that he managed to grab the golden ring on his first release, but has since dropped it and can't find it in the dark. He's proven that he can play and that his friends can as well, and he's proven that once you become a not very strong producer it's difficult to break out of being a not very strong producer.
The album kicks off with "Long-Haul Driver," one of those character sketches that was a highlight of Aloha, Manitoba, and which features such inane, idiotic lyrics I'm not even sure which to use here as an example. How about "My cargo's bound for Winnipeg by way of St. Paul. I'll be picking Brown-Eyed-Susans by the road as twilight falls. When I cross back into Canada, I may stop for a smoke; Yes, I know these things will kill me, but, my dear, so might the road." The song is clearly meant to come of as one of those Randy Newmanesque slices of life that illuminates the human condition using the mundane details we all share, but what it amounts to is a series of mundane details illuminating the utter lack of lyrical ability possessed by Luke Doucet.
Three tracks in the album features one of the most awful covers I've ever heard, in The White Falcon's take on The Cure's "The Lovecats." I never thought that "The Lovecats" was one of The Cure's better songs, but this version makes the original a Beatles song, a masterpiece. It's clunky and dull, and unmelodic. (I tend to think, too, that if you place a cover so close to the top of an album that maybe you know your own songs aren't quite up to snuff, which is certainly the case here. Unfortunately the cover thrown in here is actually worse than any of the originals, which is saying something.)
The Band's Rick Danko gets a tribute paid of sorts, with "The Day Rick Danko Died," which is a slice of the worst kind of blues, played by a group of white middle class Toronto musicians who sound like they learned the blues from listening to Johnny Lang albums. A 'Dedicated to Rick Danko' on the inside cover would have been a more fitting and tasteful tip of the hat... The lyrics to this song are so far beyond bad I'm not even going to quote from them.
Part of the problem here is that Luke Doucet seems so enamored with his own playing that he's unable to let the songs be songs, and is okay with them being beds for his noodling. It almost feels like he knows the compositions are undercooked, but thinks he can save them because he's just so darn talented, but with arrangements this dull and obvious, no amount of talent can lift them up.
The primary bright spot is the subdued "Motorbike," written with the excellent Mike Plume. It's a song that sits back and just is what it is, it's lyrics subtle and playful. It's got a guitar solo that goes on for a couple of bars too many, but compared to the mess that is the rest of the album that's a small complaint. The other stand-out is the title track, which plays very much like a Blue Rodeo song, with a JIm Cuddy-assisted sing-long chorus.
3 RECONSIDERATIONS.
Luke Doucet and Ryan Adams aren't oceans apart in style, both trading in countrified twang and both often failing, but there's a huge difference between the two: Ryan Adams, as bad as he can be sometimes, challenges himself over and over again. He throws in some new wave here and there, dabbles in punk, and even when rockin' the country stylings he plays with conventions, lyrically and musically. Luke Doucet challenges himself not at all. He constantly repaints and redresses what he's done before, rarely adding anything new to the pallet.
Ever since Aloha, Manitoba I've counted Luke Doucet among my favorite artists, despite his constant mediocrity in years since. I have no idea why I've done this, except that Aloha, Manitoba was that good. (For the record, I don't want Luke Doucet to just remake Aloha, Manitoba over and over again... In fact, part of the problem is that he hasn't come along any since he recorded that debut. I just want the man to do something, anything that doesn't make him sound like he's spinning his wheels in the mud of mediocrity... I want the man to challenge himself.) With Blood's Too Rich I'm going to have to finally reconsider that, finally accept that Luke Doucet has just let me down too many times and needs to be kicked to the curve.
I'm going to remove his name from my Favorite Music list on Facebook once an for all.
A once and future golden boy on the Canadian music landscape is an almost-was, officially.
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Click HERE to listen to the awful "The Day Rick Danko Died." But don't say I didn't warn you...
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