AMERICANA Album of the month

Is Heaven Real? How Would I Know

Veteran singer-songwriter’s 19th effort draws deep from Memphis

BRIGHTSPARK

8/10

Foreboding yet playful: Dowd in the studio

UPSTATE New York has been Johnny Dowd’s home for decades now, though his music has always been rooted further afield, a rich absorption of the rural sounds he heard growing up in Oklahoma and Memphis. The latter in particular provides the bedrock of Is Heaven Real?…, with the 75-year-old returning to the town where he once led as wamp-blues outfit during the late ’80s.

Recording in Memphis, of course, required asimpático band. He duly found one, centred around local guitarist Will Sexton and bassist Amy LaVere, while retaining regular cohorts Mike Edmondson (guitar) and Dowd’s drummer sister, Jif.

The upshot is an album that refracts Memphis tradition –blues, soul, country, rock’n’roll –through Dowd’s twisted lens. Front and centre is his snarly voice, lending these songs a foreboding air that often belies a more playful intent. The epic “Black And Shiny Crow” is a muted Southern stomp which namechecks Melvin Van Peebles, Mr Tand Hannibal Lecter, while Dowd longs to be the bird of its title. There’s a vaguely Dixieland feel to “Pillow”, with clarinet and swinging percussion, as he contemplates the vagaries of French philosophy. By the end, his head’s hurting: “The path it is short/ The road is long/I am beginning/To hate this song”. “LSD” is a lazy shuffle through the back pages of his psyche, punctuated with low bleats of baritone sax and woodwinds. “I blew my mind back in ’63”, sings Dowd, as if summoning an old ghost. “Psychedelics made a man of me/I saw some things I can’t unsee”.

Nothing here gets too spirited for its own good. “Another Mule” is ushered along by lurching piano (courtesy of Lucero’s Rick Steff) and Krista Lynne Wroten’s country fiddle, yet manages to retain a mournful minimalism. As does the title track, which feels like a slow procession, led out by Vox organ, towards what Dowd envisions as a free and beatific existence, only it’s somewhere beyond the grave. You really wouldn’t expect anything less.