Joie Blaney is, or at least, was a musical anomaly. Under the guise of Joie Dead Blonde Girlfriend, he plays an acoustic guitar faster and louder than any punk band. He sings his songs with the soul of a poet and with the voice of a cement mixer. He writes from the heart. He writes honestly and never once complains. Never once sounds like Livejournal poetry. Never once falters. Like all true artistic anomalies, Joie Blaney, under the guise of Joie Dead Blonde Girlfriend, is a genius.
But this isn't Joie / Dead Blonde Girlfriend. For the uninitiated, Dead Blonde Girlfriend not preceded by "Joie" means that it's Joie Blaney with full backing band. And Joie Blaney with full backing band makes this review a lot more difficult to write for several reasons.
(a) It's an artist I love doing something original that moves away from their originality. And while for understandable motives, (would you fancy singing your heart out, alone, on a stage every night?) the music will probably never capture the true essence of why I love this artist, even through I may treat it as if it does,
(b) I'm the sort of idiot to get blinded by my love for an artist, and so, from time to time, find myself ranting and raving about even the most mediocre generica and shite, simply because of some stupid, mislaid attachment to an individual involved with it.
(c) Because I don't want to do something awful like try and compare Dead Blonde Girlfriend to Joie / Dead Blonde Girlfriend.
Throwing part (c) out the window immediately because, with songs plucked straight from Joie's solo offerings Pretty As A Picture and Imaginary Friend and the rest being acoustic-fronted punk rock songs, I can't promise that I won't do parts (a) and (b). I promise that I'll try, but that's the best I can do. Sorry.
Opening with "Merry Go Round", which would have been more suited to closing the album, Dead Blonde Girlfriend gives itself a rather innocuous beginning. Ironically, with closer "Long Distance Lullabye" being much more suited to opening the album, one is left with the feeling of listening to an album in reverse. It takes until half way through third song, "Letters Home", which, after a minute or so of backfiring along like a Skoda on the hard shoulder, finally brakes into the best song The Ramones never wrote.
From here on in, the album trades off Ramones-punk and rock-ballads every other song. Lacking the meticulous and exorbitant production values of too much modern rock, the lo-fi recording seems to add something intangible to songs like "Punk Rock Love Song," "February 14th," and "In Your Corner." All coming with the Blaney hallmarks. Sounding less original than they may have done with only vocals and acoustic guitar, they still speak volumes for the man's song writing ability, but really, only reinforce the duplicity of Dead Blonde Girlfriend. When "February 14th" runs into "I Hate Myself", which doesn't even deserve to label "filler", when "shit" would be more appropriate, the whole album seems to take a recess deeper than The Great Depression that it just doesn't have enough time to recover from, despite the very best efforts of "Wish You Luck" and "Long Distance Lullabye".
Sadly, that's really the thing though. The whole album is fucked up. Song one should be song twelve, song twelve should be song one... Reverse the tracklisting and Dead Blonde Girlfriend improves exponentially. It could recover from "I Hate Myself" and move on, pretending nothing happened, like that one idiot that walks into a streetlight in a public places. The trades between tempos would make more sense and the album would reach a proper close, rather than just plunging into the darkness.
Eight of the twelve songs are fabulously addictive (if not the most original you'll ever hear), two are instantly forgettable and two are so bad that they are the most memorable tracks on the album, and just seem to come at the wrong moments. As much as it saddens me to say, anyone not familiar with Joie's solo work may never find a place in their collection for Dead Blonde Girlfriend.
