J. Wes again...donkey style and lots of keyboards

OK, this came out in February, and I probably would have reviewed it then if Goner was still sending me records, but they aren't, so I'm very late.

John Wesley Coleman
Last Donkey Show
Goner

With Last Donkey Show, John Wesley Coleman continues his mad rampage though country-hiccupped, psychedelic garage rock. This third solo album, aided by The Gris Gris’s Greg Ashley, as well as members of Strange Boys, Bad Sports, Sir Lord Raven, Golden Boys and Fleshlights, again juxtaposes, cheery, loosely strung but avidly attacked jams with faintly macabre subject matter.

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Coleman again…this time with a formal review

I mentioned John Wesley Coleman’s late 2010 record Bad Lady Goes to Jail a couple of weeks ago, liking it a lot and thinking that I wasn’t going to get a chance to review it. But, you know, things change, and a few days after that Otis said I could go ahead and write about it for Dusted. Which I did, and it runs today. I conclude:

Coleman attacks even the oddest subject with a crazy glee, a “yi-yi-yi-ing” abandon that is as hard to resist as it is unsettling. There’s a vertiginous vibe to his bashed-out chords, his careening edge-of-control singing, his manic, pounding rhythms that makes you feel like you’re not on the firmest of ground, that perhaps you and Coleman are pumping your legs wildly, Roadrunner-cartoon-style, in the instant before you plummet down. And yet, you don’t fall. Bad Lady Goes to Jail is a giddy, exuberant, crazily appealing ride from one end to another, and a rickety tour de force that seems like it could blow apart at any minute, but never does.

The rest of the review is here.

You can still get those live mp3s, recorded at WFMU, at the Free Music Archive.

John Wesley Coleman III

Another great one from Goner, Bad Lady Goes to Jail, the new album from John Wesley Coleman III. Coleman is an Austinian garage rocker, a scruffy renaissance man who paints and sings and is perhaps best known for leading Golden Boys. Coleman fits quite well into the laid-back, country garage ethos of the Goner label…he’s a natural complement to bands like Limes and Ty Segall. I like fuzzy, buzzy, slouch-riffed “Fields of Love” best, but how can you resist the high wistful longing of sports mash note “Oh Basketball” or the stop-start, we-fucked-up-but-let’s-go-ahead-anyway mayhem of “Christians Drive Like Shit.”? Well, maybe you can, but I can’t.

Here’s the title track, courtesy of Austin Town Hall


And some free cuts from his live show on WFMU last year