MOG

“A Year in the Wilderness” is a really excellent roots-rocking new album from John Doe, out June 5 on Yep Roc. Here’s my PopMatters piece which ran on Friday.

“John Doe could easily coast for the rest of his life on his history—with ground-breaking cow-punkers X and alt.country-inventing Knitters and, since the late 1990s, in a string of seven solo albums, ranging from country-flavored singer songwriter to venom-laced roadhouse punk. It’s all been good to excellent, and sometimes revelatory, and if he quit right now, he’d still be a legend. Heck, I’d give him a lifetime pass just for ‘Big Blue House’.

“The point, though, is that John Doe doesn’t owe us anything. The fact that he’s made his best-ever solo album roughly 30 years after he started is gravy. Recorded, reportedly, in just two weeks, Doe’s seventh solo CD ranges over boot-stomping garage rockers (‘Hotel Ghost’) and lovely pop-leaning duets (‘Golden State’ with Kathleen Edwards). It showcases Cash-like murder balladry (‘The Meanest Man in the World’) and brings Exene Cervenka back into the fold, at least as a lyricist, in the wryly melancholy ‘Darling Underdog’.” (And more here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/reviews/38869/john-doe-a-year-in-the-wilderness/

Here’s a link to an interview with Doe on NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11304560