Soul Coughing - Elastic Art-Pop from Downtown

The son of a career military man, Mike Doughty lived between Leavenworth, Kansas, Belgium and Massachusetts, before finally settling in New York to pursue his poetic calling. Little by little he carved out his own small space in the underground circles of literary New York, publishing a handful of pieces without ever managing to break into Manhattan's literary salons, which had been the true epicenter of American literature since the Eighties. Writing poetry wasn't the only thing good old Mike was up to: he also worked as a music reviewer for the weekly The New York Press, and to make ends meet he worked the door at the Knitting Factory, the trendy club at the heart of downtown New York's alternative art scene.

It's 1992, and for Mike this is a golden opportunity to get in touch with the Big Apple's music scene, perhaps even managing to put together a band after past stints in microscopic punk-hardcore outfits that left no trace whatsoever.

The Knitting Factory is also a regular haunt of John Zorn, who often stages one of his most abstruse game pieces, "Cobra," and among the improvisers it's not unusual to find Mark De Gli Antoni, a keyboardist fresh off a master's in composition at New York's Mannes College of Music, and co-head, alongside fellow student Norman Yamada (another fixture at Zorn's performances), of the Rough Assemblage project.

Doughty (who sings and plays guitar) and De Gli Antoni meet right there at the Knitting Factory and discover shared musical interests. That's how the spark is lit for the birth of a new project.

The two quickly find bassist Wilbo Wright and cellist Catherine Bent and organize a few rehearsals, but the lineup barely lasts (Wright would go on to join the Tortoise-affiliated Ui). Finding new members in a scene overflowing with musicians isn't much of a challenge: Sebastian Steinberg takes Wright's place on bass, while Israeli-born Yuval Gabay is tasked with holding up the new group's music with his drumming.

A handful of rehearsals, and it's already time for the debut. It's a Monday night at the Knitting, one of those slots no band is willing to play. Doughty takes advantage of the collective refusal and gets his boss to grant him the space: the four show up at one in the morning in front of a tiny handful of onlookers - just seventeen, and hardly thrilled - billed as «M. Doughty's Soul Coughing», borrowing the name from the title of a poem Doughty himself had written, recounting a bout of vomiting Neil Young had in the back of his tour bus.

Despite a less-than-encouraging debut, the four don't let discouragement get to them, and they tour the city's clubs building a solid reputation that soon draws the attention of several labels eager to sign them.

Meanwhile Doughty opens his own venue, SLAW at CBGB's 313 Gallery, which quickly turns into the band's go-to spot for showcases, by which point they've trimmed the moniker down to simply, definitively, Soul Coughing.

The turning point is now at hand, and their entry into the record market comes in 1993, when Slash, a Warner Bros. subsidiary, secures the services of the promising new sensation from New York's crowded underground.

Fresh, seductive and bursting with energy from every pore, Soul Coughing introduce themselves to the wider public in 1994 with a debut that leaves jaws on the floor. Doughty, De Gli Antoni, Steinberg and Gabay craft fourteen little gems of melodic restraint paired with sound constructions and refinements steeped in an experimental streak that manages to embrace different genres without ever breaking stride.

Ruby Vroom (its title inspired by the name of the daughter of Mitchell Froom, sound engineer and close collaborator of Tchad Blake, the album's producer) is the first testament to a band whose identity was already clearly defined, one that slips free of any orthodox critical labeling.

It's pop, but not the kind that tops the charts. It's jazz, but not for purists. It's swing, but without the pomade-sculpted quiff. It's rap, but the vocal lingers too much on melody. It's funky, but without frills or acrobatics. So what is it, then? A site of postmodern contamination that, conceptually, isn't far removed from Talking Heads. There's a strong sense of urban frenzy and melting-pot energy running through the weave of this music, even though it comes across as carefree and placid, at times relaxed and almost smiling.

"Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago" kicks things off, and Steinberg's thick, swinging double bass grabs us by the ankle and drags us into the indefinable poetics of Soul Coughing, who polish their pop sound on the ballads "Janine", "Sugar Free Jazz" and "True Dreams Of Wichita", flinging the leftover shards that fall to the floor into an irreverent, mutant puree. The hiccuping funk of "Moon Sammy", the whirling swing of "Casiotone Nation" (where Doughty mimics an antiphonal call-and-response in the breakdown with the countdown), the exotic rhythms of "City Of Motors" and the rocky irregularities of "Supra Genius", complete with a faux-scat finale, the driving acid-jazz of "Mr. Bitterness", the hip-hop raids of "Screenwriter's Blues" and "Uh, Zoom Zip" are the ingredients Soul Coughing knead and mix to create a casserole that, once baked, gives off a playful, irresistible aroma. On "Down To This", De Gli Antoni's samples barge in, lifted from the reggae of Toots & The Maytals (the opening guitar riff), the vocal swing of the Andrews Sisters (the backing vocals and horn inserts) and the blues of the legendary Howlin' Wolf (the ragged "ooooh" that pops up here and there), while the track itself is a funk/rhythm & blues number over which Doughty raps, unconcerned about the melting pot gradually forming beneath him. And the vintage-cartoon intro of "Bus To Beelzebub" catapults us onto the bus crossing a grotesque funfair full of colorful plastic cutouts, and the feeling of being swallowed into the bizarre atmosphere of "Lost in the Funhouse," the short-story masterpiece by writer John Barth, builds step by step.

The strangeness of Soul Coughing lies not only in their perfectly executed stylistic crossovers, but mainly in the song structures, which show no clear separation between chorus and verse. In doing so, they flip the roles of the internal parts of the traditional pop song into rather synthetic bodies, in which the reiteration of melodic motifs is a frequent device.

Mike Doughty is at his best with clever, oddball lyrics, focusing on the sonic harmony between words and on a shrewd, constant pursuit of alliteration to give the lyrics rhythm and vitality, simulating scat flourishes and bending the rap approach toward indie disenchantment and a strutting pop appeal. Mark De Gli Antoni is in a state of perpetual disruption with his arcane samples, which thicken the songs' architecture and help build that crazed stylistic collage made of urban chaos, slipping in fragments of the soundtrack of everyday life in the Big City here and there, like drills beneath giant cranes ("City Of Motors") or hammering echoing through crowded construction sites while seagulls wheel over the pier ("Sugar Free Jazz") or horns honking at intersections ("True Dreams Of Wichita"). His inserts often act as genuine backbones ("Bus To Beelzebub") or lend distinctive colorings ("Screenwriter's Blues"), at times even disorienting ones ("Supra Genius"). The Steinberg-Gabal duo is tight and straightforward, with the former weaving thick, swinging lines that, combined with the latter's precise drumming, create a sinuous, seductive groove.

Buoyed by three released singles ("Sugar Free Jazz", "Screenwriter's Blues", "Down To This") and roughly 150,000 copies sold, Soul Coughing break into college radio circles, earning a solid following that's almost unexpected given how peculiar their sound is.

Their song "The Brooklynites", included on the soundtrack of "Blue In The Face", marks the start of a long series of contributions to film soundtracks.

We're already in 1995, and Mike Doughty takes advantage of a break in the promotional tour to work on solo material that won't see the light of day until 2000.

The wait for a new Soul Coughing record lasts barely two years. Opening the doors to Irresistible Bliss is the single "Super Bon Bon", one of the New York combo's most representative tracks, with its come-hither bass riff and a Doughty never so aggressive, taut as a wire in the rapped refrain. But the new offspring doesn't measure up to its predecessor. Right when the opportunity arises to push further the boundaries they operate within, buoyed by the praise received for such an oblique proposition, the four settle for songwriting that, while still rooted in that mix of funk, pop and swing, doesn't take risks, never goes beyond a job well done. De Gli Antoni himself, the acrobatic protagonist of "Ruby Vroom", seems less inspired, reducing the quality of his contribution to mere scaffolding, even if he does unleash one more flash of genius by firing off the muted trumpet of Raymond Scott's "The Penguin" on "Disseminated".

Irresistible Bliss immediately proves different, more deliberate and with a distinctly more pop-leaning cut. In short, less reckless, as if the four had suddenly looked each other in the eye, aware they had to grow up.

The slacker aura hasn't been entirely shed, though, and Soul Coughing haven't turned into long-faced Pierrots or dead-serious office drones struggling through the subway crowd to get to work. The rataplan stride of "White Girl" is fizzy and bright, and "4 Out Of 5" brings back Doughty's arithmetic wordplay (he sings with a more conventional delivery throughout the record); "Soundtrack To Mary" has a carefree air akin to "Sugar Free Jazz", and "Soft Serve" is a placid funk groove, perfect for a summer pool party with an open bar, colorful straws and paper parasols on long toothpicks dunked into fruity cocktails. On "Collapse" you can glimpse the seeds of drum'n'bass that would later spread through the band's entire connective tissue, but the songs are more "normal", and something dark and partly painful starts to creep into the group's music (with Doughty by then caught in heroin's downward spiral): the introspective shades of "Lazybones" and the rhythm & blues of "Idiot Kings", not to mention the chiaroscuro of "Paint", partly crack the debut's dazzling smiles, turning them into bittersweet expressions.

The tracklist flows smoothly, sure, but you never get hit by those jolts of surprise that make you shake your head wondering what mad idea you're about to witness, and by the time "Sleepless" and the faded trip-hop tones of "How Many Cans" roll around, the emotional thermometer reads pretty low.

Even so, the album reaches 250,000 copies sold, the peak for Soul Coughing, who, riding this new modest success, play the Lollapalooza and H.O.R.D.E. Festival Tour between 1996 and 1997.

In the same period, the two unreleased tracks "Unmarked Helicopters" and "The Bug" end up on the soundtracks of "X-Files" and "Batman & Robin" respectively, while "The Plane Scraped Its Belly On A Sooty Yellow Moon", the result of a collaboration with Roni Size, is part of the soundtrack to the film "Spawn".

With 1998's El Oso comes the stylistic shift that never arrived with Irresistible Bliss. There's a whiff of drum'n'bass and jungle in the air, and Yuval Gabay knows all about it. It's his drumming, with its dry snare and even more pronounced metallic reverb, that represents the most obvious element of change on what turns out to be the group's final studio outing of original material. De Gli Antoni, for his part, goes back to being De Gli Antoni, once again dispensing the ingenious samples that made "Ruby Vroom" great: his contribution, though, is decisive in shaping an atmosphere that's more oblique, chaotic and claustrophobic than on the previous record. The songs remain concise as ever, built on simple ideas, with Mike Doughty returning to the stubborn repetitions of his lyrics.

Right from "Rolling" you can sense a different mood, darker. Soul Coughing partly abandon the carefree spirit of their debut; the funk and jazz of the first two records are now transfigured and rendered almost unrecognizable within a more complex amalgam that has by now become a singular, frontier art-pop. Still, the original essence isn't entirely disowned, and the cheeriness of the playful "Circles" serves as a connecting thread, as does the slow "Maybe I'll Come Down", clouded by a thin jazzy haze. But the drum'n'bass scent spreads everywhere once "Blame" kicks in, with Steinberg's double bass contracting and stretching like an elastic band, and the air catches fire with the jungle propulsion of "$300" (on which De Gli Antoni drops in a specially distorted sample of comedian Chris Rock), "Monster Man", "I Miss The Girl". "Misinformed" is robotic and angular, "St. Louise Is Listening" is punctuated by hiccuping double-bass stabs, and on "The Incumbent" it's as if you can hear the Beastie Boys gone lounge. Sudden clouds gather on the horizon as "Pensacola" arrives, drifting into nothingness with Doughty staying, for the most part, just above a whisper.

El Oso is an album of extreme courage, showing a band still eager to experiment and dispelling the doubts raised by "Irresistible Bliss" about a possible canonization of a sound that instead becomes even more acidic and intractable here. But it's only a matter of time before the band, undermined from within by disputes over song royalties, enters an irreversible crisis that leads, in March 2000, to an inevitable breakup.

Several releases concerning the band appear after it stopped being active: in 2002 Slash put out Lust In Phaze (a title borrowed from a line in "Soft Serve", which is itself excluded from the tracklist), a collection of twenty tracks that also includes "Unmarked Helicopters" and the previously unreleased "Buddha Rhubarb Butter".

Between 2003 and 2005 the independent label Kufala released several live bootlegs recorded between 1994 and 1999, as well as a collection of live rarities with the wonderfully unoriginal title "Live Rarities".

Solo offshoots

Every member of Soul Coughing, both during the band's seven years of activity and (especially) after its end, has taken part in outside collaborations and personal projects.

The most consistent and prolific in terms of his own material is singer and guitarist Mike Doughty. As mentioned, in 1995 he recorded an album during a break in the band's touring schedule. Those recordings stayed in the archives for a full five years: only in 2000 did Mike decide to release Skittish (reissued three years later together with the EP "Rockity Roll"), sold at his many shows and on his personal website in an attempt to sidestep what was then the "threat" of Napster. It's a collection of twelve intimate, well-crafted tracks, just voice and acoustic guitar, with Doughty giving himself over to a thoroughly pop vocal style, free of his usual rap-style phrasing. The mood is far more melancholy than Soul Coughing, but the melodic DNA is more or less the same. Among the standout tracks are the opener "The Only Answer", "No Peace, Los Angeles" and a revisiting of Mary J. Blige's "Real Love".

2002 brought "Smofe + Smang: Live In Minneapolis", a live recording taped in Minneapolis in February 2002 that also includes Soul Coughing songs, again released without the backing of any label, arriving the following year.

Doughty, who in the meantime had freed himself from heroin addiction, signed to ATO Records, with whom, in two-year gaps, he released three new albums: "Haughty Melodic" (2005) and "Golden Delicious" (2007) have a sound closer to lightweight pop-rock, with fairly conventional songs constantly chasing a melodic hook fit for radio play. Two decent records, at times a bit unfocused, nothing miraculous or especially memorable. 2009 brought Sad Man Happy Man, which shows a tentative move toward folk ("Lorna Zauberberg", "Year Of The Dog"), but there's also a dose of nostalgia in the Soul Coughing-style rap of "Pleasure On Credit".

Doughty's career has so far produced no real peaks of excellence, with only "Skittish" standing out as a thoroughly inspired album, more immediate and, in some ways, less crowd-pleasing than the records that followed.

Worth mentioning is his 2001 collaboration with John Flansburgh and John Linnell of They Might Be Giants - an act his solo work has grown closer to over time - on the CD included in the sixth issue of the literary magazine McSweeney's, edited by writer Dave Eggers (a huge They Might Be Giants fan), as well as his cameo the previous year on Brian Transeau's album "Movement In Still Life", on the track "Never Gonna Come Back Down".

Mark De Gli Antoni's résumé is sparser: he can claim Rough Assemblage and a single solo album released in 1999 on John Zorn's Tzadik label: "Horse Tricks" is a seventeen-piece puzzle featuring playful interludes ("Big Umbrella", "Los Enfant"), Kraftwerk-style minimalism ("Alabama") and strange, murky Residents-like games ("They Wave"). There's also room for an instrumental leftover from the mother band, "Mermaid". The result is an interesting work, often brushing up against musique concrète, somewhat uneven and off the beaten path. Gabay and Steinberg also take part.

De Gli Antoni continues to work as a sound engineer at various New York recording studios.

Sebastian Steinberg appears in the credits of New Zealand singer-songwriter Neil Finn's elegant, beautiful "Try Whistling This" from 1998. A year later came his collaboration with Japanese-American duo Cibo Matto on their second and final album "Stereo Type A" (which also features Sean Lennon and Arto Lindsay). In 2003 he's part of the band playing on Marc Ribot's "Soundtrack II", and in 2010 he's on bass on "Familial", the solo debut of Philip Selway, drummer of Radiohead.

Unreleased material bearing entirely his own stamp came out in 2008 under the pseudonym Homesick Orchestra: the result is the nocturnal, peculiar Scarlet Fever.

Steinberg has also worked as a session musician for David Byrne, Lisa Germano and Eddie Vedder.

His former rhythm-section partner, Yuval Gabay, joined Tod Ashley (ex Cop Shoot Cop), Duane Denison (Jesus Lizard, later also Tomahawk) and Jennifer Charles of Elysian Fields in 1995 to form Firewater (a band that would go through numerous lineup changes), an ironic blend of indie-rock and pop with a career built on a consistently solid average quality.

After the end of Soul Coughing, Gabay set up UV Ray with African-American singer Trudi Mosiamo, blending ethnic moods with breakbeat and hip-hop. In the meantime he worked as a session musician, collaborating with artists of the caliber of Lauryn Hill, Zack De La Rocha, Suzanne Vega, and They Might Be Giants.

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

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