Sadly, the truth does matter very much in this case, because the truth is that Nikki died suddenly after completing this album last March, turning the mere act of listening to The Truth Doesn't Matter into an autopsy, a chance to pick its lines apart for hints and grave prophecies of what was to come. That the actual cause of death remains a mystery only encourages this speculative impulse; when Sudden sings "Oh, black tar/ Burns all my money away/ It's not worth the stain on my name to relieve the pain," chances are he's not taking about road construction. But while The Truth Doesn't Matter features some of the most confessional and openly sentimental songwriting of the former Swell Maps frontman's long, labyrinthine solo career-- making it a natural companion piece to the autobiography he was writing concurrently-- the robust performances and elaborate arrangements here do not sound like the work of someone who was ready to check out.
The stark album packaging emphasizes this point. It has no reference to Sudden's passing, no teary-eyed liner-note remembrances-- just a series of grainy, black-and-white photos of Sudden in his elder bohemian-statesman element (Marc Bolan top hat and all) playing with the boys in the band. But if these images reinforce Sudden's lifelong allegiance to a shabby-chic form of rock and roll that fell out of public favor sometime after 1977, The Truth Doesn't Matter's magnificent opening track, "Seven Miles High", is surprisingly less CBGB than Studio 54. A winsome tale of love-at-first-sight on "the discotheque floor," embellished by a pulsing hi-hat groove, a bittersweet synth symphony, and a backing chorus of female vocals, it's a consummate portrait of a restless artist who, even in his fourth decade of recording, was still looking for new ways to build his proverbial car. If no other song on The Truth Doesn't Matter braves as radical a departure-- most of the material here is typically beholden to Sudden's holy trinity of Dylan, the Stones and the Dolls-- the Spectorized swoon of "The Ballad of Johnny and Marianne" and somber, harmonica-hued piano instrumental "All This Buttoning and Unbuttoning" achieve the same majestic melancholy.
But even if it comes just five tracks in on a somewhat overlong 15-song album, the six-minute "Green Shield Stamps" is The Truth's undeniable centerpiece, an autobiographical paean in the vein of Neil Young's "Helpless" and Van Morrison's "Cypress Avenue" that would surely become Sudden's signature song where he still alive to sing it. Over an elegiac, Hammond-soul stroll, Sudden summons a roll call of friends, family, and inspirations-- his mom, his deceased brother Epic Soundtracks, long-time Jacobites collaborator Dave Kusworth and T. Rex's "Jeepster", among them-- to "Raise a glass ... for those teenage years you can never get back." It's a song seemingly designed to invite posthumous interpretation, but Sudden doesn't sing it like he's saying goodbye, but rather taking stock of his life lessons as a means of carrying on. However, if we are to cull an epitaph from this album, let it be the song's final lines: "Dave, Epic and I got together a band or two/ Recorded in our bedroom/ What else were we gonna do?" A most fitting testament to the collision of boredom and bedlam that initially ignited Sudden's 30-year run, and that will continue to inspire future rock and roll renegades long after he's gone.
