The pop world loves novelty and madness but it can be a fine line between being perceived as innovative quirky and as just plain annoying. Thankfully Thomas Truax largely avoids the latter although on initial plays I had my doubts. True, his rich voice and inflections may not be to everyone’s liking. Combined with the, at times, surreal lyrics and the information that he builds and utilises his own curious instruments you may be excused the need to run a mile to avoid this album but, hang in with me here…
… For songs such as ‘Sea Creatures’, ‘The Raindrop Says Goodbye To The Cloud’ and ‘Alien In America’ certainly have their ‘strange’ moments but are undeniably lovely. There’s method undoubtedly in Truax’s madness as well. ‘Alien In America’ mixes rattling junkyard percussion with a meaty bass drum thud and driving strings to foreground a lyric that sums up the madness of U.S. foreign policy. It’s a bleakly funny song that name checks Starbucks and Michael Jackson before dropping in lines as satirical and stark as any Jello Biafra ever came up with: ‘Mess with us, we’ll blow your little world away / We might just do it anyway’. On other songs Truax tackles insanity – ‘If We’re Gonna Go Crazy’ with its skewed rhythm track, skeletal feel and bizarre lyrics like ‘Said my penis to your vagina / I’m from Mars, you’re from Venus’, the terrors of modern urban life – ‘Escape From New York’ with its home made hip hop beats and organic feel, and death – ‘Like A Falling Tree’, a moving song with its picked guitar and strings, the dark words set off like a soothing lullaby. Poignant lines like ‘I cannot dream / I cannot see / Please remember me’ set the tone before it culminates in what sounds like a mad mariachi band bringing things to an end. ‘Why Dogs Howl At The Moon’ parts one and two seem to suggest that animals and insects are more intuitive and attuned to nature than humans. Part Two is particularly effective with an eerie noir feel offset by a discordant acoustic guitar break.
Comparisons are far and few between. A recent review of an Edinburgh show (elsewhere on this site) suggested that Truax falls somewhere between Jonathan Richman and Tom Waits and that’s as good a pair of reference points as I can come up with here. There’s an imaginative inventiveness and innocence to the lyrics, music and arrangements that echo elements of both along with a similar love of classic melodies combined with a need to mess ‘em up and torment them. Also, there’s a naivety that can sometimes seem twee but is tempered by a keen intelligence and a willingness to take risks and experiment. Oh, just in case I’m labouring the point I’ll condense it into this: he sings about animals and builds his own junkyard instruments! It is an outsider album with little care for fashion or fear of ridicule and for that I applaud it. It’s also an enjoyable, often engrossing record and for that I recommend it. Just remember though ridicule is nothing to be scared of but the reasons why dogs howl at the moon might be.