Drugdealer - The End Of Comedy

Drugdealer

The End Of Comedy

(Weird World)

September 9th, 2016

Grade: C+

Verdict:  A collection of  a best of 60’s lite rock, meets a best of 60’s psych pop, meets a west-coast underground music scene staffed version of Hee Haw, meets too much studio production.

If anything can be said of Michael Collins, it’s that he is the living personification of where that special place where the adage “write what you know”,  meets “if at first you don’t succeed..”The former referring to his compulsion to write songs exclusively about, on, or inspired by drugs. The later referring to the fact that the Baltimore-born musician has been in and out of several acts since 2009.

Collins first broke out onto the music scene with his psychedelia-inspired, chillwave project,  Run DMT; and even managed to eek two albums out of it before being served a cease-and-desist from a similarly named EDM group with presumably far better lawyers. He then went on to release The Brado Story under his new stage-name, Salvia Plath, in 2013; a project in which he learned how to actually play multiple instruments and record a pleasant, if basic, psychedelic folk album. He even had a stint where he simply requested that all his friends  send him their poems of varying quality to be transcribed into songs for a one-off album called One Hit Wonders, that he released under his own name in 2012. Point being,  Mr. Collins has shown an  uncanny ability to false-start his way through a music career, and shows now signs of stopping. Which is all fine and dandy as long as you don’t get to attached to his projects.

Drugdealer is Collins latest offering in his string of re-re-rebirths, and by far his most ambitious yet; displaying his growth from a quirky, perpetual stoned sample-dabbler, to a full blown musician. And on The End Of Comedy, Collins displays a  new willingness to harmonize his psychedelic influences with some of his more less than conventional influences. In this case, 60’s adult contemporary and 70’s AM Gold, with just a touch of plastic-soul tinged disco.  The result is a strange, though not entirely unpleasant sounding pop record.

For better or worse, Comedy, plays like a best of 60’s lite rock, meets a best of 60’s psych pop, meets a west-coast underground music scene staffed version of Hee Haw, meets a little too much studio production. The fact that a collection of so many contrasting styles with an even looser collection of musicians (Ariel Pink, Weyes Blood, Sheer Agony, and Danny James) sounds half as good as it does, is a testament to Collins masterfully done arrangements. As different as everything sounds from track to track, and nothing ever sounds like it clashes.

But damn, if some of his tendencies from his earlier work don’t find a way to creep in, exposing some of the weaknesses of the whole thing. Paradoxically,  The End Of Comedy ends up somehow sounding both overproduced and underdeveloped at the same time.Taken as a whole, it comes across as nice little throwback pop record, sprinkled in with some delightful idiosyncrasies and homages. At times almost more fitting as an easy listening score to a film, set simultaneously in the seediest and classiest club in LA. But broken down song by song, the cracks show some unfinished ideas paired with some questionable production choices.

All the vocal performance sound unnecessarily layered and buried in this annoying echoey, drowny fuzz. It’s a technique that works to try and smooth out the weaker singers on the album (see: everyone not named Weyes Blood). But on the track featuring her ( the seriously cool, Carole King-esque, jazzy croony, “The End Of Comedy”) her remarkable voice sounds half as strong as it could be; all but buried beneath the production.

Michael Collin’s gift for tasteful arrangements is the real star here though, in spite of his overly involved  studio tinkering.. “Suddenly”, again featuring Weyes Blood (the true MVP of the album), effortless morphs from a gentle piano tune with shades of Lit FM, to a blue-eyed soul late 60’s 4x4 disco thumper. “It’s Only Rainy Where You Stand”, starts as a paint-by-numbers Beatles-lit, guitar jingle. But then gradually morphs into a full blown orchestral string arrangement by the end, really elevating an otherwise simple song. “Theme For Alessandro” hints at what this album could have been with just a little more focus and commitment to just one particular direction that never really gets a chance to go anywhere. It’s a simple, hauntingly beautiful, jazzy instrumental with a whining sax and some ambient street noise in the background that brings it all together. In fact it, along with “Comedy Outro” and “Far Rockaway Theme”, are the only instrumentals on the album; and by far the only songs not affected by the weird production choices on an otherwise busy sounding album.

That’s not to say this mishmash of AM Gold top 40 hits, psych, and for at least one song (The Neil Young-inspired “Sea Of Nothing”), solid guitar soloing, can’t work.But with the majority of the songs sounding like simple, half-finished ideas, what's left is a perfectly enjoyable but perfectly forgettable collection of easy listening pop, devoid of substance. The lyrical content is nothing to write home about (unless you’re one of those poor souls who still enjoys choruses consisting of nothing but a never ending chain of “la la la’s”.  In which case you’ll enjoy the otherwise decent “My Life”), and the melodies are decent but nothing warranting a second listen through.

At its whole, The End Of Comedy, is certainly a step forward for Michael Collins, and a hint of things to come should he decide to stick it out with the Drugdealer moniker. But somehow it ends up tapping into the most damnable thing about the very easy listening music of the decade he was trying to pay homage too; it’s nice enough to not warrant touching that dial. But not anything you’re exactly going to remember either.