I don't know how I missed this, but...
New Daniel Johnston!
But that's not all: it's a new, polished and produced Daniel Johnston--an album where the production values match the grandeur in his mind. And speaking of his mind: one of my favorite old Daniel Johnston songs gets a new life on this album--"I Had Lost My Mind"!
I've only heard one track so far, "Freedom," and I'm happy to report that Daniel Johnston doesn't lose any of his best qualities by recording a clean, well-produced album. The song is still catchy, there's still a hint of mania in the voice, and I can't imagine that anything has been autotuned.
Hm, has anyone tried autotuning Daniel Johnston? That would be terrible.
But to return to my previous point: if anything, Daniel Johnston recording an album with an actual producer makes his music sound like it can finally match his ambitions. It's kind of strange to wonder what his earlier albums, recorded on cassette tape, would have sounded like. It's equally strange, given Johnston's life story and subject matter, to see that on the various music blogs reporting the new album, he's regarded as something of an elder statesman in independent music, a singer-songwriter who has passed through shifts in popular taste with his sound mostly unchanged.
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