Published on Feb 16, 1999
My first real taste of Kevn Kinney and his music was,
surprisingly, not with his band drivin’ n cryin’. Instead, it was
during a set on a syndicated program of acoustic music. Kinney and
R.E.M.’s Peter Buck sat in the studio and cranked through two or
three songs off Kinney’s debut solo effort
Macdougal Blues.
I have since lost the CD which has those performances, but a few
months ago, I happened to stumble upon a used copy of the album,
and decided to pick it up and give it a nostalgic listen.
Kinney is not the greatest singer in the world – and I somehow
think that he would be the first to support that claim. But his
style of songwriting reminds me of a cross between R.E.M. (who, not
surprisingly, would partially adapt this style for
Out Of Time), the Grateful Dead and Matthew Sweet. It’s an
interesting combination of humor, bleakness, folk, country and rock
– and, for the most part, it works.
The title track – God, listen to the stream-of-consciousness
style that Kinney delivers his vocal lines in, and tell me that you
don’t hear Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do”. (Crow should write a
thank-you note to Kinney for this.) The song is a darkly humorous
picture of trying to become part of a scene that, for the most
part, doesn’t exist in the manner that you thought it did.
Kinney’s folksy side comes through in both the dark, depressing
numbers (“Not Afraid To Die”) and the light, airy mandolin-laden
songs (“Last Song Of Maddie Hope”). Both of these particular songs
are addictive – I found myself travelling in my car with nothing
but this tape for about three days. Sue Kinney (his wife?) adds
harmony vocals to three songs – and her vocals are what make “Iron
Mountain” so calming and powerful.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t missteps on
Macdougal Blues. “Gotta Get Out Of Here” is a big one – and
this is the song that I hear future R.E.M. references in. (It’s
worth noting that Buck and bandmate Mike Mills do add their talents
in certain areas of the album, including Buck’s production. Also,
“The House Above Tina’s Grocery” is a track that could have been
left off.
But for the most part,
Macdougal Blues is an album that I don’t think got the kind
of attention and praise that it deserved when it came out in 1990.
Kinney might not have gotten rich off of this album, but he
hopefully realizes that this one album captures the spirit of
alternative and folk almost perfectly – and it should be revered as
a bruised classic.