Songdog - The Way of the World (2001)

Welsh four-piece, hailing from the same place as the Manics, release debut album that couldn't be more different from the Preachers. Gentle and repetitive guitar and mandolin snake around a high-pitched, trembling vocal, and the poetic but, nevertheless, slightly odd lyrics can be isolating (they describe themselves as Schopenhauer's favourite band). All in all, an oddball debut. : ~ Total Guitar Review.

01: Goodbye Isabel
02: Lazarus In Flames
03: I Love My Angel's Plastic Wings
04: Blind Picasso
05: South London Winter
06: Jezebel
07: Rainy Night In Chinatown
08: The Girl Downstairs Has Nightmares
09: In the Well of Lost Causes
10: Stalker
11: The Way of the World
12: Shipwrecks

Album info:

Songdog
Lyndon Morgans - vocals, acoustic guitar
Karl Woodward - electric guitars, harmonica, mandolin
Dave Paterson - drums, percussion, backing vocal

Additional musicians:
Keyboards - Robert Lesniewski; piano on (12) - Frank Goodhind; bouzouki on (7) and bass on (9) - Gary J. Brady; excerpt from 'Marta' sung by Raymond Frazzoni


To be original, invigorating and daring is becoming an increasingly rare phenomenon in today's MTV saturated world. Enter Songdog, a totally different listening experience lead by one Lyndon Morgan,occasional playwright, novelist and songwriter, who pushes the art form on to a different plateau. The Way of the World is a quite
extraordinary album bursting with Morgan's fabulously detailed Lyrics, which are heavily laden with tales of love, loss and passion (and sex in a cemetery!). The backing is very spare allowing Morgan's lyrics the room to breathe and weave their magic. Take the opening lines on first track 'Goodbye Isabel' for a taster of what's to follow; "In her heart I think she wants me dead/Second best she sleeps with me instead/ I give her all her books and records back/Roy Orbison, Burt Bacharach and Kerouac, in paperback/West Side Story Soundtrack." Some of the songs have a bleakness and desolation to them that cuts right to the core; witness the line in 'South London Winter' where Morgans Howls "Lucy wrote me a letter, pink crayon on blue Paper, to say every useless thing we'd planned was off." The Way of the World is very intense in a Leonard Cohen kind of way, and it stopped me in my tracks and demanded that I give it my full attention. It's a remarkable achievement and a real treasure - seek it out. : ~ Hi-fi Plus


There's not a huge demand for introspective Welsh folk-rockers, and the only other Songdog material available on Avax is an excellent cover of Desolation Row. Find it here:

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