(le) poisson rouge

When Mike Doughty released his second official solo album, 2008’s Golden Delicious, the reaction from fans was intense. “Some hated it, some loved it better than Soul Coughing,” Doughty says. “I tend to take sharp left turns. Every time I put out a record, the audience seems to like what I did two years ago better. You’d think I could shrug it off because that’s what always happens, but it always gets to me.” Doughty admits that his upcoming album, Sad Man Happy Man – released October 6th on ATO Records – is a reaction to his fans’ reaction and that he’s giving the people what they want. “I really went for the ‘na-na-na’s’ and the simple choruses and stuff on Golden,” he says. “The songs on Sad Man are more arcane and convoluted songwriting-wise, though they’re sparer in terms of instrumentation. Although my choruses are still simple — I love taking phrases and repeating them ad infinitum.”

The largely acoustic Sad Man Happy Man is a deliberate return to everything people love about Mike Doughty, he makes albums that simmer with verbal wit, and Sad Man Happy Man is no exception with its songs about everything from relationship bust-ups (Doughty was going through one while he was recording it) to his astute observations about the American economy.

“Pleasure on Credit” is a celebratory tale of the American spender in the face of the U.S.’s credit addiction crushing the world’s markets; “Lord Lord” is all sly drug references, like “Tango and Cash” and “Dr. Nova,” which are both brand-names for bags of heroin. “That song is kind of like my ‘Walk on the Wild Side,’” Doughty says. “I like how Reed’s tune is all about tranny whores and yet is all over classic rock radio.” Doughty wrote “Rising Up” after his girlfriend sent him a terse email and, with his heart thumping, wrote five pages trying to exorcise his anxiety. “It’s my Gloria Gaynor moment,” he says with a laugh. “The message of the tune is: ‘You’re fucked, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll keep on with my spiritual journey.’ Yes, I really am that much of a hippie.”

Musically, Sad Man Happy Man finds Doughty returning to his acoustic roots thanks to its stripped-down arrangements that feature Doughty backing himself on guitar. He also did all the drum programming, as well as played keyboards and what he calls the “weird noise stuff,” while his long-time touring partner Andrew “Scrap” Livingston handles bass duties. Recorded at New York’s Kampo Studios, the album was co-produced by Doughty and engineer Pat Dillett (They Might Be Giants, David Byrne, Arto Lindsay), with the exception of album’s first single “Doubly Gratified,” which was produced by David Kahne, who helmed Soul Coughing’s 1996 album Irresistible Bliss, as well as albums by Paul McCartney, Sugar Ray, and Tony Bennett. Doughty maintains a widely read blog that chronicles his unique shows, international travels, and creative endeavors. He’s currently writing a memoir, recording an electronic album entitled Dubious Luxury, and working on a photo book about Eritrea’s capital city of Asmara, for Yeti Books. He also recently published a play, Ray Slape is Dead, in 24 by 24: The 24 Hour Plays Anthology, alongside Terrence McNally and Theresa Rebeck.

But for now, Doughty is looking forward to a fall ‘09 “Question Jar” tour with his friend Scrap and releasing Sad Man Happy Man. “Basically I’m trying to make stuff I want to listen to,” he says of the album. “And I mean that in a literal sense, not like, “Were I a listener, I would like this,” but rather something I can listen to on the subway on headphones and really dig. This is my life, this is what I do. That sounds matter-of-fact, but I really do look at it as a sort of calling — and being an artist at its best is selfless. I’m working for the language, I’m working for the music, I’m working for the songs. I’m a happier guy when I’m conscious of that.”

As anyone who’s caught one of Christina Courtin’s live performances can attest, the New York City–based musician decisively takes over whatever space she’s occupying, her long dark hair flying behind her as she paces the stage, her voice malleable and otherworldly, an irrepressible smile on her face throughout. It’s not simply youthful bravado but a kind of rapture that possesses her—the unalloyed pleasure of singing, connecting, pouring out as much of her heart as possible in an all-too-brief set.

Making her Nonesuch debut, though, Courtin turns her high-voltage style inside out. Her self-titled disc is disarmingly beautiful and intimate, her voice at times pared down to a confessional whisper, yet it’s just as compelling as her bravura work on stage. There’s something beguiling about opening tracks “Green Jay” and “Bundah,” as if we’ve stumbled into a reverie already in progress. Courtin’s vocals are warm, gentle, and dreamy; she stretches out individual words in slow motion while chamber-ensemble strings wrap themselves around folk-rock-leaning melodies. As the disc progresses, darker, moodier sounds and emotions lurk around the edges of her songs. One gets the sense that turmoil lies beneath the surface, and that feeling becomes palpable by the seventh track, the tour-de-force “Laconia.” Metal-tinged guitar chords courtesy of Jon Brion push aside the string ensemble and Courtin’s voice turns startlingly raw as she repeats, like Dorothy in Oz, “How did I end up here, and how do I get back?”

Perhaps this 10-song set is a mirror of the journey Courtin herself took, from her Buffalo, NY, home to a coveted spot at The Juilliard School to live-music stages throughout New York City, at both its grungy clubs and its fabled concert halls. Courtin had been studying the violin since she was three and was gifted enough to make it into Juilliard as a violin student. Yet singing had always been a covert passion. As Courtin recalls, “I was singing ever since I was little; I always knew that I could. It was like this secret that I had or something. It was weird—I was really, really embarrassed. It took me a long time to be public about it. I just did it for fun. When I was 16, I wrote my first songs and I thought, ‘All right, let’s make a record.’”

When she entered Juilliard, Courtin kept writing, though she initially kept her singing talent to herself. “It took me a while to realize what I wanted to do. I was miserable. And then I started singing in my junior year. From there everything changed.”

Courtin agreed to participate in multimedia shows that her fellow Juilliard students would put on for their after-hours entertainment, playing pop and jazz and whatever else they weren’t getting to do in the classroom. At first, she proceeded with caution, but after her initial terror subsided, she discovered that performing her songs was exciting, addicting even, and she was inspired to put together a band to play around town and to record an independently released disc. Her Juilliard friends became her first fans: “The only friends I had at the time in New York were people I met at school, who were all mainly classical musicians. Luckily for me they were really supportive and came out to hear us play in places they probably would have never set foot in otherwise. But it was a scary experience, to have only musicians in the audience! Eventually my friends told their friends, until the people coming to see us weren’t just musicians anymore. Soon enough the audiences were full of people that I didn’t know at all.” She laughs. “I guess my friends were all sick of me.”

For Courtin, the pop and classical aspects of her career operated on parallel tracks. She was offered the chance to work with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble at a Carnegie Hall Professional Training Workshop in 2004. She went in to collaborate as a violinist with other musicians from around the world, but some members of the Silk Road Ensemble “spilled the beans and told Yo-Yo that I sang. I ended up singing a song for one of the concerts at Zankel Hall. It was a lot of fun, and I met great people that I remain friends with today. The experience turned me on to so many feelings and so many people.”

Courtin was the only non-operatic singer asked to join the group at another Carnegie Hall workshop, led by soprano Dawn Upshaw and Argentine composer Osvoldo Golijov. Upshaw not only became a supporter and a fan, but she suggested to her friends at her longtime label Nonesuch that perhaps they should go hear one of Courtin’s shows. Those artistic relationships have continued: Courtin played violin in Golijov’s La Pasión Según San Marcos (The Passion According to St. Mark) in the Canary Islands in February and is scheduled to sing alongside Upshaw in Dresden, Germany, this May.

Courtin co-produced the album with bassist Greg Cohen and her frequent band-mate, singer/guitarist Ryan Scott. The inspired choice of Cohen reflects Courtin’s own range and ambition: he’s played live and/or recorded with John Zorn, Ornette Coleman, Tom Waits, Antony and the Johnsons, even Woody Allen. They chose to cut most of these songs in Los Angeles with an accomplished group of musicians, including keyboardist Benmont Tench, drummer Jim Keltner, pedal steel player Greg Leisz, and multi-instrumentalist Jon Brion. (Leisz helps bring a pronounced Nashville lilt to “Foreign Country” and” One Man Down.”) Says Courtin, “When we went out to L.A., I was pretty nervous, and didn’t really know what to expect, musically or personality-wise. But it turned out great. They were really, really sweet to me—and they didn’t have to be. There was a lot of time spent talking about what instruments we were going to use on which tunes, but there wasn’t a lot of time spent on learning the tunes. Those guys don’t need anyone to tell them what to play, once they got a sense of the music. Their ears are amazing. You give a song to them and out comes this incredible arrangement. They all have killer instincts."

Additional sessions in New York City featured guitarist Marc Ribot and pianist Rob Burger (of the Tin Hat Trio). Pulling together the sessions from both coasts was engineer-mixer David Boucher, who’s also recently worked with Randy Newman and Andrew Bird. Courtin arranged most of the strings, performed by Brooklyn Rider, a boundary-pushing string quartet that also performs as part of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. (To further the musical connections, the quartet’s co-founders, brothers Colin and Eric Jacobson, lead the Knights, a chamber orchestra in which Courtin plays.) The only thing Courtin didn’t do on this record, notably, is play violin—“Take that, Juilliard!” she jokes—though she does contribute some viola and toy piano to “Hedonistic Paradise.”

Appraising her album, Courtin says, finally, “The records that I love the most are the ones that are full of life and energy—and that doesn’t in any way mean perfection. They have real feeling to them. One of the things I wanted to achieve with the record was for it to be a real world of its own, with songs and sounds that take you somewhere else.”