Songdog
Haiku
Evangeline

Songdog is a strange band. Their music has literary lyrics and offbeat arrangments. Lyndon Morgans sings in an androgynous warble while guitarist Karl Woodward and multi-instrumentalist Dave Paterson weave gorgeous music around him. He sings of falling for the girl at the escalator at HMV with a tremulous voice in the song of that name. The instrumentation is so bare it hardly exists, yet it's more than enough. "Hat-Check girl" has Morgans duetting with the tough-sounding Suzanne Rhatigan. The song has a fine folk vibe to it.

"Hitcher" is a tale of a ghostly hitcher. It's another fractured alt-country song of the kind that Songdog excel at. The bluegrass stylings of "Days of Armageddon" is very appealing. Lyndon Morgans sings his suitably doomy lyric with conviction. "The sky will be a lake of fire just before the end" he notes.

Songdog are a necessary band. Any album with titles like "She Played 'Summertime' (on the brothel piano)" and "With her pop-art lips and cappuccino skin" deserves to be heard.

Copyright © 2003 Anna Maria Stjärnell