Like k.d. lang and Laurie Anderson, singer/songwriter Dudley Saunders began his music career first as a critically-acclaimed performance artist - only to find the experimental folk music he wrote for his pieces take over his career.
Described by critics as "surreal, modern folk tales" (VILLAGE VOICE), Dudley's performance art pieces mixed hallucinatory, Patti Smith-like writing with post-modern Appallachian ballads and hymns - as they might have been reimagined by Sonic Youth or Radiohead.
The pieces were a fixture on New York's East Village art-scene in the early '90s, finally drawing critical kudos even from THE NEW YORK TIMES and THE NEW YORKER. But as times changed, something funny happened: mainstream audiences began responding to his musical experiments. And they wanted CDs.
His first two CDs - RESTORE and THE BILLY WHITE ACRE SESSIONS (Fang Records) - were both nominated for GLAMA and OMA awards, and his song THE UNDOING scored the recent documentary film, THE PROCESS.
But when it came time to record his third CD, THE EMERGENCEY LANE, he discovered his reputation among musicians had reached a whole new plain. Suddenly, players from the bands of DAVID BOWIE, DUNCAN SHEIK, BECK, PAULA COLE, MARIANNE FAITHFULL, LEONARD COHEN and RUFUS WAINWRIGHT were offering to play on Dudley's "post-modern folk songs" (IMPACT) as a sheer labor of love.
The resulting album not only turned out to be an artistic high-point, but a sign that Dudley's long-under-the-radar reputation may finally be reaching a "tipping point" in the alternative music world.
THE SOUND
With his trademark blend of HANK WILLIAMS country, JONI MITCHELL-jazz and RADIOHEAD-art-rock, the new album's 13 songs display all the peculiarities that make Dudley so hard to categorize: from the ancient-sounding coal-miner ballad, THE WINDING SHEET to the S&M Joni Mitchell-jazz of LOVE SONG FOR JEFFREY DAHMER (with time left for a pit-stop on the almost-classical sounding THE RAIN ON 8TH AVENUE), the press comparisons to Jeff Buckley, Joni Mitchell and Chris Isaak can't help but fall short.
THE VOICE
With its emotional tight-vibrato and effortless range, Dudley's voice is often compared to Chris Isaak and Jeff Buckley, and MuzikReviews recently declared it "one of the best voices on the alt-country scene."
THE SONGS
The songs operate more in the scene-painting mode of Leonard Cohen/Tom Waits, and tell haunting tales of bohemian life, darkly detailed and sometimes hallucinatory. In MUSHY-HEADED KID, for instance, a frightened man is "merging with the cracking wall/the crack extends into his face/the girls are bickering in the hall/yeah, he says, I guess/you do belong/in this place." Or witness the "buck-tooth call girls on the corner" in THE RAIN ON 8TH AVENUE, "like red-haired roses in the rain/dropped off by a drunken mourner/on the wrong grave."
But throughout, the harsh lyrics mesh with haunting melodies, and the haunting melodies break against dissonant harmonies. Nothing quite sounds like the music Dudley is making.
