Love…
KING DUDE
Review

To put it simply, King Dude’s Love may be one of the first truly American neofolk albums.  Too often entrenched in the trappings of traditional English folk, neofolk artists have lived in the shadow of Death in June, Sol Invictus, Current 93, and the other monoliths of the genre for far too long. Undergoing a bit of a renaissance, artists such as Cult of Youth, Waldteufel, and Skurv are taking neofolk and twisting it into their own craven images. Influenced by tropicalia, punk, black metal, and anything else that may cross their ears, theres a generative spirit in all of these bands (and many more) that’s breathing life back into a genre that seemed to be dying with the retirement of the old guard. In the case of King Dude ( TJ Cowgill of Book of Black Earth, and creator of the brand Actual Pain), Love plays out like a Smithsonian Folkway recorded at an Appalachian Satanic commune.  Dais records cites Woodie Guthrie and Johnny Cash as two prime influences on this record, but after a few listens it’s clear that his record is a paean to the apocalyptic spirit that inhabits the dark corners of this countries traditional music. There’s murder ballads, love songs to ghosts, spirituals about lucifer; though Cowgill hails from the rainsoaked Pacific Northwest, Love feels like a journey around the frost rimed back roads of all this countries forgotten towns.
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Read the rest of this review after the jump.

Opening with a melancholic, organ driven introduction, we segue right into “Don’t Want Me Still”. A haunting, guitar driven ballad, there’s a wall of noise that underlies the entire track giving one the impression of the song being sung in the dead of winter, metallic scraping and wind whistling as he recounts a tale of failed love.  The noisiness that threatens to drown out the rest of the song seems clearly inspired by The Swans. The next track, “In the Eyes of the Lord” is a personal highlight. A country guitar rhythm accompanied by Cowgill’s wonderfully dynamic voice exploring it’s lower range, this is true apocalyptic folk. Like a benighted Johnny Cash, he rumbles a tale of loneliness and loss that devolves into a mournful instrumental before returning to the chorus.

Loneliness and loss are the prime movers of this record. There’s an icy bitterness that seems to underly most tracks. Take the mysterious “Hello Mary”, a melancholic ballad that simmers with a cold rage just below the surface. The throbbing bass, and clean guitar line contrast with Cowgill’s pained delivery of the morbid lyrics, painting a painful image of a fate worse than death. The album closer, “Endless Rose” is another darkly beautiful piece of Americana, the melody undercut with what sounds like a sustained organ note. The harsh noisiness contrasts with the somber delivery, like a choir singing in a flooded cathedral.  It’s the ability to contrast the elegiac and gothic that make this album what it is. As the album flows it evokes a pastoral sadness which seems uniquely American. Love is a collage of trauma. The civil war widow, the fire and brimstone preacher, the doomed wagon trains to the coast, Cowgill is able to capture the American holy terror like few artists out there.

For those thinking this record may be an endlessly depressive walk through the forest of Cowgill’s imagination, “Spiders in her Hair” provides a light hearted counterpoint to the earlier tracks. A whimsical song dedicated to a “girl not quite of this world”, “Spiders in her Hair” evokes the spirit of Woody Guthrie while maintaining a warped sense of gallows humor. In a similar vein comes the twisted campfire singalong of “Lucifer’s the Light of the World”. A simple acoustic number, Cowgill sings the praises of Lucifer while relaying a parable of battle for man between God and Satan. It’s incredibly catchy, and so overtly cheerful in contrast with it’s  Evangelical Satanism that you can’t help but crack a smile. Even the noisy “Big Blue Eyes”, with it’s stomping percussion, and upbeat guitar inverts expectations once you realize that Cowgill’s love may be quite dead, staring over his shoulder with those big blue eyes.

TJ Cowgill has come a long way from Book of Black Earth.  With his King Dude project, he’s helping fill a void in American dark music that is a long time coming. Bridging the gap between English and American neofolk, Cowgill is bringing to light an elusive truth about Americana—it’s more often darker than than we can imagine.

Love is currently available from Dais Records on vinyl. Also, check out Actual Pain, Cowgill’s incredible brand.