Delectable tofu for the meat dodgers
Mike Doughty’s songs have always been punctuated with memorable turns of non-sequitur-laden phrase (What is “the five percent nation of Casiotone,” anyway?). So when Doughty sings “I wrote a song about your car / I wrote it with your hips in mind,” you’re instantly back in that quirky lyrical place, and all the better for it. For fans who’ve followed the singer/songwriter since the demise of Soul Coughing, there’s a lot to recommend on Golden Delicious, Doughty’s third solo studio album. Highlights include alternate-universe dance craze “Put It Down” and the brief, spare, vaguely menacing “I Got the Drop on You.” There are also some atypical missteps: “Fort Hood,” which borrows its “let the sunshine in” chorus from Broadway’s Hair, and “More Bacon Than The Pan Can Handle,” which repeats the title phrase into monotony. And “27 Jennifers”—one of Doughty’s best—is released here for the third time. This time out, Doughty may not get the kind of TV assist that turned “Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well” into an audience expanding hit, but those with a taste for his off-kilter sensibility will find his latest delicious indeed.