This being a Daniel Johnston review, you people must love raw honesty and such, so here's some pretty authentic stuff: I'm down with the flu. So sick am I, in fact, that I think I'm going to let David Bowie take it from here.
"This will have to be one of my favorite albums of the year so far. All of the Johnston traits are here in abundance. Beautiful melodies, fine if painful lyrics, and a searching poignancy that clutches the heart like iced velvet."
Thanks, Dave, dig the "iced velvet" simile. Very glam. Readers: Your Daniel Johnston CD has just been reviewed by David Bowie. Take care and goodnight.
Such are the simpering testimonials Daniel Johnston always swam in, flowing from the oddest sources-- Eddie Vedder, Matt Groening, Kurt Cobain-- making him sound less like a favored songwriter and more like a pet cause. Even if his celebrity fans are truly interested in giving Daniel exposure rather than spritzing their own images with outsider chic, all they accomplish is forever interlocking Johnston's music (simple and lovely and undeserving of any awe) with his famed manic depression.
As it usually happens in these cases, it's the No. 1 fan who commits the most egregious faux pas of all. Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse-- who had proven his devotion to Johnston by covering "Hey Joe" and "My Yoke Is Heavy"-- got to produce Fear Yourself. "Daniel is a gift to us," he embarrassingly gushes on the sticker blurb, though the album-- despite being credited solely to Johnson-- is pretty much Mark's gift to Daniel. Linkous handled all arrangements and played most instruments on the CD, relegating the author to vocals and piano. The result, while chock full of beautiful bits, backfires terribly. The lacquered production makes Johnston sound like a guest, or rather a ghost, in his own house. His timid voice haunts a suddenly spacious mansion, caught in mirror halls of multitracked harmony, bouncing off exotic trinkets (Mellotron? Chamberlin? Optigan?!).
The opener "Now" is a deliberate false start, but also a statement of purpose: as Folk Implosion's glossy One Part Lullaby kicks off with a lo-fi guitar figure, "Now" spends its first minute as a tin-thin boombox recording, gradually funnels in noise, and suddenly emerges in glorious high fidelity! For about 30 seconds! And then ends! The meta-narrative couldn't be clearer: The Producer is here, come to save this poor sap from his lo-fi past.
Press materials insist that Linkous stayed out of the genius' way, Albini-style. "I don't even want to say I produced, I'm just ecstatic to have anything to do with getting more of him on tape," goes the exact quote, but even the most cursory listen debunks this soundbite as positively Rumsfeldian. Who put Tinderstick-sized holy-shit orchestra hits on "Syrup of Tears"? Who turned "Love Not Dead" and "Living It for the Moment" into Britpop pastiche? Did Johnston walk into the studio intent on using french horns and glockenspiels on "Power of Love"?
Overproduction is relative, mind you-- I love when bands raid Jon Brion's basement. The problem with Fear Yourself is not that it sounds big, rather that it sounds condescending to the man it's supposed to be all about, and more importantly, by. The lushness of a "One Part Lullaby" or-- I dunno, "Automatic for the People"-- is inoffensive because Barlow and Stipe arrive to it naturally. But here, it's a handout. Linkous, for all his best intentions, implicitly paints Johnston as helpless, his previous output a dry run for the big time, his art in need of patronage. Iced velvet, indeed.
