APRIL 2008 ONLINE EDITORIALS
John McKay – Beetles and Bacteria
By Nate Harper
John McKay plays the blues, or mostly blues, rather, such that even when he’s playing reggae or something mellower it still has the blues somewhere in its soul. The Hammond and the heartache - it’s all there, and it’s musically that many of the tracks on his new CD, “Beetles and Bacteria,” relate more of what McKay is trying to say than his lyrics.
To look at the cover of the record, one immediately has the sense of a locally produced album, however in many ways it overcomes the pixilated photos, multiple fonts and felling of disjunction it evokes with its quality recording and production, delivering in sound what it perhaps lacks in cover coherence.
McKay’s myspace page (myspace.com/johncottonmckay) categorizes his music as “A bit of Bluesy Roots Rock and Reggae with a songwriter sensibility,” and in making this association with singer/songwriters one imagines his admiration for the canon - Drake, Cohen, Dylan – and this perhaps explains his odder turns of phrase.
Throughout much of his album McKay chooses pure originality, often at the expense of approachability for the listener. Many of the lines McKay sings I’ve never heard before on a rock record, but that said, there’s a line between avoiding cliché and not leaving an in for the listener.
Which isn’t to say that McKay doesn’t have talent as a songwriter - just that his greatest successes come when the ideas are more easily put into words, such as Maria, a straightforward tribute to the eponymous lady. Similarly, when the topic is his love for making music, McKay sounds as genuine as any troubadour with a guitar – it’s just on tracks when he relies on his personal insights that he sometimes comes up short.
Many performers have used their music to trace the necessary escape and the pain that comes with using drugs as an end, and McKay’s contribution to the thrills and sadness they provide are occasionally grabbing however rarely memorable. On other tracks, such as the opener 98 Years, McKay is abstract without necessarily being evocative, thus denying the listener the creative ambiguity to read some of their own life experiences into the music to be able to relate.
One is reminded of a performer doing all original material at an open-mic night, McKay obviously feels at home with his guitar around his neck, however his songwriting chops have yet to reach a level that would you bring you out on a Tuesday to hear him at a bar across town.