DAUGHN GIBSON
Me Moan
2013
There is an intensity and drive to The Sound of Law, the first song on the sophomore album by American trucker-turned-singer/songwriter Daughn Gibson, that I have not discerned on Daughn Gibson's first (great!) record. He unleashes the word 'motherfucker' like a shotgun blaze out of nowhere.
That opener was just a fit, probably, because on the second song he is back in a more relaxed, though always slightly askew, mode. The song's calm steady beat lulls you into sleep, but then you listen to the lyrics and realize there's dead and paranoia everywhere. Daughn turns the Phantom Rider, a Marvel comic hero, into a serial killer that 'took a family'. It is the repeated coda where the song really takes off but by then, ironically, we are past the point of danger and there is nowhere to go anymore.
It hasn't turned stale yet, Daughn Gibson's mix of electronic beats and countryish croonerism. It is probably so exciting, not just because it is an original sound, but because after listening to it for more than a year now, it still defies some basic internal logic of mine. I always have the feeling that the combination does not make sense and that it will derail any minute. It is even built into the music, like when in Tiffany Lou (on his previous record) the music gets stuck in a loop for a few seconds, caught in its own unlikely web.
In the same threatening sense, you constantly get the sense he is conjuring up demons. Even when he comes closest to a normal song, as in Franco where he actually sings yearningly and the guitar sounds yearningly and the beats don't suddenly run amok but keep going in 80s drum machine fashion, you're not quite buying it. He can sing about “finding a way for two lips to collide,” and then just trail off with “I wish we had a kid who never wanted to die.” On this song, with its dreamy atmosphere, Daughn Gibson sounds like he is walking around in Twin Peaks. It is the same juxtaposition of the American yearning for the romantic 50s with the haunts of the alienated modern society.
I read in an interview that Gibson likes 'the weird', and it shines through in his lyrics. You kind of want to look away when he describes a scene such as “What's got me feeling so wrong is one shot / Grandaddy so hot / he left me in the parking lot / kissing on the blacktop,” but it's just unclear enough to also make you laugh and wonder what the hell he is talking about. Even more hilarious is All My Days Off, which sounds like it could come up on your MOR radio station; until he starts singing of a billboard with “Fucked Up Judgement Day” on it.
The cheesy is never far off but, like his 'weird' influences, Daughn Gibson is at his best when he walks the fringes.
