You would think that during a time of natural disasters, economic uncertainty, and deep political divisions, we'd want a little less apocalypse in our pop culture. And yet apocalypse porn is more popular than ever. The Dark Knight Rises, The Walking Dead, Revolution, Justin Cronin's Passage books-- our primal need to envision and confront the way the world ends continues to be fed by expensive, slickly produced, even rousing commercial entertainments. Burning Daylight by Seattle metal musician-cum-neo-folk singer-songwriter T.J. Cowgill-- who records and performs under the incongruously goofy moniker King Dude here and under his own name in the band Book of Black Earth-- belongs on the opposite end of the big-budget blockbuster scale, but his album's appeal is directed at the same impulses.
Burning Daylight's pitch-black narratives, set in charred landscapes where God and the Devil wage a final battle for supremacy, are superficially presented as nightmares, with Cowgill singing in a low, sinister croak pitched at a subterranean frequency somewhere between Johnny Cash at half the RPMs and a root beer belch. But like all apocalypse porn, Burning Daylight is really a fantasy about a world without complications, where it's still possible to tell what is truly good and what is not. For all the spooky, disembodied white noise and echoing haunted-house vocals he lays on top of his songs, Cowgill is at heart a 1950s nostalgist, a sort of undead Chris Isaak with a weakness of sock-hop balladry (see the heartfelt "You Can Break My Heart"), chicken-scratch rockabilly (the hopped-up "I Know You're Mine"), and twangy guitars that ring wondrously like church bells set against a full moon.
A world soaked in blood and overrun by psychopaths might not be an ideal, but at least the choices are clear. "Like a wolf in troubled times I'm a sinner who loves his crimes/ I will kill every man who stands between me and the holy land," Cowgill sings on the Duane Eddy-goes-Dante rocker "Holy Land". Survival is what it boils down to in King Dude's universe, though in accordance with Cowgill's 50s influences, this life-and-death struggle carries over to a melodramatic fixation on sex and "true" love. There's also blues in Burning Daylight, particularly in how Cowgill conflates Satan with powerful, controlling women. On the gothic country song "Barbara Anne", he's driven to violence by desire" "I'll shoot that man in the head if he hurt you Barbara Anne," he promises. On the clattering "I'm Cold", he tries to one-up his witchy companion by bragging that he's "livin' deep in Hell and you know I'm not sweatin' yet." But Cowgill can't fully conceal the faith and even romanticism that burns at his core. "I'm sorry to leave you but know that ol' Death ain't the end," he sings on the Leonard Cohen-like "Lord, I'm Coming Home". "I will see you in the Kingdom of Light when our souls meet again."
Burning Daylight at times resembles Bob Dylan's Tempest, a similarly gravel-voiced meditation on death and love at the edge of existence. The comparison isn't particularly flattering for Cowgill, who strains a little too hard to sound evil with his beyond-his-years vocal affectations. Where Dylan's voice is actually constricted after a half-century of wear and tear, Cowgill's limitations seem self-imposed and one-note, both musically and conceptually. But even if Burning Daylight occasionally slips into shtick, Cowgill is still a good songwriter who can evoke a dark mood and the big, warm, beating heart underneath it.
