Thomas Truax - Why Dogs Howl at the Moon

by Helen Tipping

published: 8 / 5 / 2007

Thomas Truax - Why Dogs Howl at the Moon

Label: SL Records
Format: CD

Experimental new album from witty New York-born, but now London-based singer songwriter Thomas Truax, which finds him playing his own home-made instruments and which proves to be totally unique

Review

Thomas Truax is originally from New York, but since his divorce has been homeless, touring Europe and playing all over the place until finally settling in South London, for the time being anyway. The first song on this album, 'Stranger on a Train', is an ode to travelling on trains in the UK and namechecks just about every rail company going. A man after my own heart, he gets his priorities right with the lyric "on Midland Mainline you get coffee free", but there is much more to it than that, and anyone who's travelled on Britain's railways for any great length of time or regularity will recognise the myriad bizarre and surreal experiences detailed here. The styles of music vary dependent on how he is feeling. 'Stranger on a Train' has a blues sound, whilst the second track 'Sea Creatures' is almost jazz-like. I'm not a huge jazz fan, so it doesn't appeal to me as much as the rest of the album. 'The Raindrop Says Goodbye to the Cloud' seems to be two songs in one, with slow wistful parts giving way to ranting fastness which eventually builds to a climatic ending. Truax appears to have been placed in the genre of anti-folk, which seems to be where record labels and journalists put artists that they find it difficult to pigeonhole. Perhaps such people are modern day composers or artists working in the medium of lyrical song, but outside of the boundaries that normally exist in the music business. Well, there's a thought that probably owes more to too much caffeine than anything else. 'Escape to New York' leaves the jazz sound behind much to my relief. It's a sparse and lo-fi ode to his leaving of his home town, a subject that provides the material for much of the album. Apparently it's played on his self-made instrument, the Hornicator - it sounds like something you might find in an Ann Summers catalogue and as I type Thomas is singing about a talking penis and vagina in the next track, 'If We're Gonna Go Crazy', a love song by all accounts. His lyrics betray a sense of humour which when combined with his ingenuity makes for a listening experience that is definitely out of the ordinary. Madness is a well-trodden theme, well if you consider someone talking with their dog and the dog responding to be mad, as on the title track (pt 1) of the album. 'Alien in America' lists all the things that most people probably find normal about America, but that Truax finds alien to his existence. And if you were in no doubt that his is an original talent and view on life, 'Why Dogs Howl at the Moon Part 2' finds Truax's dog answering his question in an existential frame of mind, with the moon being the world's biggest fly away bone that the dog will only reach when s/he dies, with death not being the end but part of a greater cycle. 'Why Dogs Howl at the Moon' is original and witty, uses bizarre home-made instruments and offers what might I might call a "unique listening experience", if I was an estate agent in real life. But I'll just say instead that it's really rather good.