Friday, January 21, 2011

Coleman again…this time with a formal review

I mentioned John Wesley Coleman’s late 2010 record Bad Lady Goes to Jail a couple of weeks ago, liking it a lot and thinking that I wasn’t going to get a chance to review it. But, you know, things change, and a few days after that Otis said I could go ahead and write about it for Dusted. Which I did, and it runs today. I conclude:

Coleman attacks even the oddest subject with a crazy glee, a “yi-yi-yi-ing” abandon that is as hard to resist as it is unsettling. There’s a vertiginous vibe to his bashed-out chords, his careening edge-of-control singing, his manic, pounding rhythms that makes you feel like you’re not on the firmest of ground, that perhaps you and Coleman are pumping your legs wildly, Roadrunner-cartoon-style, in the instant before you plummet down. And yet, you don’t fall. Bad Lady Goes to Jail is a giddy, exuberant, crazily appealing ride from one end to another, and a rickety tour de force that seems like it could blow apart at any minute, but never does.

The rest of the review is here.

You can still get those live mp3s, recorded at WFMU, at the Free Music Archive.

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