Is and Always Was (High Wire)

Daniel Johnston's work has always been inseparable from his life. The excellent 2005 documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston gives a comprehensive overview of the legend surrounding the man (thumbnail sketch: promising young basement singer/songwriter with religious and sexual hang-ups descends into – arguably drug-induced – severe, delusional schizophrenia).

Unlike most ‘outsider’ recording artists Johnston's material is not merely good for curiosity value. His songs have been covered by such luminaries as Tom Waits, Flaming Lips, Sparklehorse and Death Cab for Cutie (and for the record, the plaintive 'Walking the Cow' remains one of my favourite songs of all time). He's not merely a crazy dude with a Jesus fixation who once nearly killed himself by wrestling the controls of the light plane from his father and plummeting to earth. But similarly, it would be ridiculous to assert that most of the interest in his recorded output isn't primarily (hell, near-exclusively) due to biographical reasons.

At the risk of appearing unsympathetic, I would assert that most of Johnston's truly great songs precede his mental breakdown (musical, at least: his visual art remains as extraordinary as ever). Furthermore, as the generally less-than-stellar covers of his songs prove, the fact that most of his early material was recorded in ultra-lo-fi – specifically, the sung-live-into-a-cassette-recorder-shortly-after-completing-the-song sort of ultra lo-fi – means that many of his best songs have a beautiful fragility to them that evaporates in the hands of a full band with a professional studio at their disposal. All of this is a roundabout way of saying that a) Johnston's more recent output isn't much cop, and b) the reedy earnestness of his singing voice isn't suited to the studio, where his wavering pitch and heavy lisp are presented in cold, clinical clarity.
That being said, Is and Always Was is entertaining listening. The jaunty High Horse is familiar Johnston territory: a call for the salvation of romantic love, complete with weird, lyrical non-sequiturs ("Looking down from your high horse/Like I didn't matter of course/And what they say at the funeral is often in remorse"). Queenie the Dog is a childlike three-chord vamp in praise of an animal that was "sent from heaven above", and he revisits his back catalogue with a new, lush recording of his autobiographical I Had Lost My Mind, which over-eggs the song with zany keyboard noises. Tears benefits from a Grandaddy-sounding campfire-country arrangement and both the title track and Lost in My Infinite Memory gets a full psych treatment, complete with old-school vocal delays – and there's something about hearing Johnston's cracked voice declaring "I love you all, but I hate myself/And it doesn't seem like anyone can help" that's more affecting than a million surly emo kids. Then producer Jason Falkner pulls out his Air production moves for the closing Light of Day, and we're done.

These days Daniel Johnston is 48, looked after by his elderly parents and keeping his demons at bay through a heavy regime of medication. The fact he can operate at all is praiseworthy, but his music shouldn't be judged under apologetic, isn't-it-good-that-the-crazy-person-is-making-a-record criteria: Johnston deserves to have his record judged against the same standards that one would apply to his beloved Beatles. So, in that light: Is and Always Was is generally OK, with flashes of brilliance. That's better than most things you'll hear from 2009.

Andrew P. Street