Life’s GPS is an odd gadget that sometimes takes us down roads we weren’t expecting to drive. For Andy Cush, who joined the psychedelic circus of Garcia Peoples in 2018, his great map-in-the-sky led him to a songwriting state that felt at odds with the band. The lyrics were more personal. More funny, too. The music, for its part, traded freak-outs and guitar jams for more straightforward rock—sometimes infused with jazz or folk, other times the American recordings of a certain country baritone—while his lyrics had the bite of a bruised orange.
As a result, with Only the Singer, Cush steps beyond the established lines and confines of psychedelia with a side project he’s dubbed Domestic Drafts. It finds him chugging along with such friends as Garcia Peoples’ guitarist Tom Malach and drummer Cesar Arakaki, plus pals Winston Cook-Wilson (Office Culture, Adeline Hotel), guitarist Katie Battistoni (Katy the Kyng), pedal steel player Dan lead (Cass McCombs, Jess Williamson), saxophonist Jeff Tobias (Sunwatchers, Modern Nature), and producer Ian Wayne (Office Culture). Together, they create a sound that wouldn’t be out of place in a corner bar, local club or anyplace patrons drown themselves in musical elixirs to forget the outside world.
These are songs of saints and sinners, losers and winners—lost souls all, such as the ones we sometimes see in the morning when we cast a furtive glance in the bathroom mirror. “After the Big Score,” the latest single, is a good example; while its plot could’ve been lifted from a pulp novel or noir film, it doubles its weight by posing the existential question of whether free will is fact or an illusion. It features Katie Battistoni, aka Katy the Kyng, on supporting vocals and a pyrotechnic guitar solo.
Let me back up: The silly yet serious “Geometric Proof” kicks off the 10-track set with the many ways Cush hopes to both love and be loved. “Someplace Without Rain,” about feeling stuck, adds black humor to the mix: “I have one more word to say/Before I go away/But if I can’t find the word I have in mind/I guess I’ll stay.” “Flesh Like a Fountain” celebrates the sense of safety that only love provides, while “The Devil and His Demons” digs into the hell that is office life. “I’m Knocking on Your Door,” for its part, comes across like a contemplative song on the radio circa the late-1970s; you’d be forgiven if, as elsewhere on the album, you confused Jeff Tobias’ sax for Phil Kenzie’s. Battistoni’s supporting vocals, meanwhile, are the frosting that makes the cake that much more tasty.
The title track, which closes the set, spirals through time to the early 1960s, when singers embodied songs written by others…until, one day, they didn’t: “All those hacks in the Brill Building/Seem to be losing their touch/Against poets who bleed through their melodies/Their trifles don’t add up to much anymore/And the new generation/Has no use for a singer like me/Clean-cut and sentimental/Just an awkward reminder/Of the way things used to be.” As with the album as a whole, it’s wistful yet sardonic, the kind of tune that causes you to miss Siri’s instructions to make this or that turn. Instead, you click repeat while patiently waiting for the GPS to re-route you to whatever destination awaits you.
The Old Grey Cat 