Haughty Melodic is Mike Doughty's first album with a full band since his days fronting Soul Coughing. It's also his first LP of original material since signing to ATO records (part of label owner Dave Matthews' earnest attempt at a monopoly on round-headed white guys who sing like muppets). Doughty's recent solo work has been mostly acoustic singer/songwriter stuff, but Haughty Melodic isn't so intimate-- picture last year's re-released Skittish backed by the Dave Matthews band, and you'll have a good idea of what this record sounds like. It's full of jam-band percussion, vanilla-funk basslines, and the occasional strings and horns, played with an affected worldliness that nearly erases all of Doughty's idiosyncrasies.
If you're searching the tracklist for hints of Doughty's quirky humor, "Busting Up a Starbucks" isn't quite satire, just the smug finger-pointing title and some name-checking, along with lyrics like "This bitter drink/ Has got you drunk/ The thoughts you think/ Become unthunk". "Tremendous Brunettes" features Dave Matthews himself in a jaunty duet about being surrounded by women and unable to get laid-- something I'm sure to which Matthews, one of the highest-paid singers in the country, can relate.
"Starbucks" is an old song to Doughty and his fans, featured on his Smofe + Smang live record from 2002-- as were others such as "Madeline and Nine". However, you have to dig through the impenetrable harmlessness of the instrumentation to discover the melancholy lyrics of "Sunken-Eyed Girl" or "Grey Ghost" and hear what makes them worthwhile. While these older songs get closer to the heart of Doughty's circular, rhythmic guitar playing and unique phrasing, the mediocre adult-contempo melodies on "Looking at the World From a Bottom of a Well" or "Unsingable Name" aren't much of a payoff.
But I keep coming back to the sparse, sincere "White Lexus", with lyrics about disowning the thrill of riding in a luxury car-- or the thrill of seeing who's driving it, alleviating his isolation-- over some acoustic strumming and a bit of pedal steel guitar. It's here that Doughty hits a real note of yearning, revealing an ordinary desire and the complicated reasons for hiding it. Not coincidentally, this is the record's most minimalist moment. The problem here isn't that Doughty isn't as malleable (or faceless) as artists like Matthews; his material sinks or swims on his personality, with light-hearted wit or disarming personal candor. Haughty Melodic is lacking in both. Doughty is better off when laid bare or with a group of musicians that push him in new directions, rather than ones who simply back him.
