I’m always saying: If you want to be happy as an artist in New York, you have to be a fan. That is to say: You have to be so in love with the art of your peers that the poverty, loneliness and rejection intrinsic to this lifestyle just don’t matter. If you’re part of an artistic community, you pretty much cannot fail. There will always be something, right around the corner, to make your life (as in: YOUR life) worth living again.
I’m thinking about these things as I wake up to discover that Daoud Tyler-Ameen (who you may know as the drummer of Cheese On Bread and Urban Barnyard) has finally, after sitting on the finished product for almost a year, released his great, great solo album: SLOW DANCE.
Earlier this year, this album completely saved my life. I had watched its creation, over a long, long period of time, and had always loved the songs that were meant to be on it, but when I finally heard it, all together, in all its fully-realized power, I was filled with a new optimism. It’s rare, in DIY circles, to see an artist get something EXACTLY right. It’s rare-er, in indie music scenes, to see a solo artist craft a heavily-produced band recording that sounds EXACTLY like how the songs have always sounded in your head: big, brash, anthemic, perfectly sung, perfectly triumphant and perfectly tender.
(And it’s ALMOST UNHEARD OF to hear a straight male songwriter sing about the emotional problems of heterosexual women with true compassion and true fear, without falling into the traps of objectification, exoticism, metaphorization, and other attributes of the Counting Crows catalogue.)
This is all just to say: I think this album is aces. If you click on either of the above images, you’ll go to the Bandcamp site for Daoud’s solo project, Art Sorority For Girls. You can hear it there.
