Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele
(Paw Tracks)
Good feeling my ass. Sure, Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele deliver the charming, jangly crooner-pop replete with sunkissed steel guitar, easy shuffle sin the drumbeats and that ukulele, which, while perhaps something short of "magnificent" is at the very least pretty gosh-darn nice-sounding. And yeah, May himself delivers a warm kind of croon, something like a cheered-up Morrissey-even when he's a heartbroken troubadour as on the schmaltzy waltz "Girls On The Square," where he sings "The girls on the square make me blue/I always compare them with you." Indeed, May's lyrics are not so very good feeling at all. At one moment he's smiling to cover a wince, drinking to numb the pain on "I'm An Alcoholic," the next he's filled with schadenfreude, singing, "How does it feel to be nothing?/I wouldn't know" on "College Town Boy."
The Dent May proffering his so-called Good Feeling Music is a bit of a downer, a maudlin popsmith masquerading behind upbeat tunes evoking shallow, sentimentalist cheer like a sad clown intent on drawing laughter from his own undue misfortune. Maybe it's a coping mechanism or maybe it's a gimmick. It doesn't really matter. The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele does the job; it softens the blows we're dealt by attracting us, first with a chipper melody and then with the ability to point at the characters in the songs and remark, "Well, at least I'm not that guy." Sometimes that's the best medicine.
Standout Tracks: "College Town Boy," "Girls On The Square," BRYAN REED
