Daniel Johnston - Songs of Pain
#527
Daniel Johnston
Songs of Pain
Genre: The original DIY confessionalist
3.5 out of 5
Highlights:
Grievances
I Save Cigarette Butts
An Idiot’s End
Is it possible to separate Dan from his music? I mean, can we look at the songs as stand alone tracks or is that impossible, given who he was and his mental state?
I mean, “Grievances”….that’s a good song, right?
I never watched the documentary about Daniel. It was off Amazon by the time I found the time to watch it and then I decided that I wanted to know less about him and just experience his music and try to decipher who he was through his songs.
It seems to me, from this collection, that Dan grew up in a pretty conservative environment. He is singing about the evils of pre-marital sex and “marching to Hell” and, well a host of guilt ridden stuff that is also filled with shame and confession.
I appreciate Dan and what he did and the sheer guts of this but I absolutely don’t want to hang out with him. I’m also sitting here, listening, fully aware that Daniel was inventing pure confessional alternative music just 14 years after Sgt. Pepper and, in many ways for me, he dwarfs that endeavor which was the epitome of nascent studio trickery and magic. Daniel is more of the traveling bluesman except that he seems to be a shut in stuck with an upright garbage piano and can’t go anywhere for his agoraphobia.
You could highlight just about any song as a representation of who Dan was. They are pretty much the same. Honkytonk piano in need of tuning, singer also in need of tuning (and some Neo-synephrine) and a tortured soul. As David Raposa wrote in Pitchfork: “it's nearly impossible to admire Daniel Johnston the Songwriter without thinking about Daniel Johnston the Person, and I'm not sure that it's the best thing to do.”
I really vacillated between 2.75 and 4. Hence the rating.
https://music.apple.com/us/album/songs-of-pain/1558590861
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