Nick Gordon
City Where You Love to Lose Your Mind
(self-released)

Did you ever notice that no one in Buffalo sticks to doing just one thing? Everyone in this city has a sideline, and that is beautiful thing. Perfect case in point: Nick Gordon breaks from his role at the center of orgiastic post-punks London Vs. New York to be the organic singer/songwriter type, but—hold the phone—it’s not that simple. It seems like every band I have ever known has had that one member who does his or her “own thing” musically apart from the main gig. The side or solo project is either a diluted version of the band they are attempting to tear away from or so far flung from what they normally do it ends up a turnoff.

Now if you’re thinking this is a case of the latter and that Nick Gordon is veering from the sleek and jagged assault of London Vs. New York to simply exercise the old nickel-and-dime Dylan muscle in his spare time, you are way off. He certainly isn’t making the same kind of music as he does in the band, either. Instead, here’s a terrifically complementary music that isn’t exactly middle ground but is of great quality and exceptional execution. It’s not punk, but it’s punk at what it does. With this second solo release in 2008, City Where You Love to Lose Your Mind—a fitting title in this town where we can’t stick to one thing at time—finds Gordon’s artful yet unpretentious songcraft honed to suggest him as a stylistic skylarker: unafraid to etch out works with wordy twists that turn about in acoustic backdrops, proving and fulfilling a vision of psych-Americana, glam rock panache, and, yes, that punk aesthetic at the core, and keeping it all on an even keel.

Gordon is a great writer and his lyrics veer into fractured abstractions, but the stories he’s telling never get lost in the mix. He comes with winsome but fragile vocal style borrowed from Jonathan Richman, who is clearly referenced on the wonderful “if the atomic bomb started rock and roll” song “Stephen Goss Is a Good Friend-a Mine.” His voice sounds as if it might break into pieces at any moment. Add to that elements from the offbeat mod-folk of early solo Bowie and the elegant mystification of Robyn Hitchcock. With help from producer/engineer Mark Nosowicz and a cast of varied musicians, Gordon does a lot with just a little, taking simple, stripped-back arrangements and presenting songs with a grandiose quality on their own terms. “Early Evening” is a bittersweet, twilight-eyed slice of naiveté that is made complete by spacious guitar, piano, and harmonica, all coalescing to create a sense of careless hopefulness, in which Gordon pines the line, “We really don’t care about tomorrow brings.” “Another New Day” sounds like the Velvet Underground playing a Beach Boys song with a horn player. The compact (one minute, 45 seconds) title track, “Taking blood, guts and gore to settle the score/Tell us less/Tell us more,” ultimately ends in a beautifully calamitous kitchen sink coda of instruments and noise. Less or more: Nick Gordon’s seemingly said it all.

—donny kutzbach

Nick Gordon celebrates the release of City Where You Love to Lose Your Mind this Friday, August 29 at Mohawk Place at 9pm. The night includes performances by Shock Cousteau, Matt Frank, Al Larsen, and Sleeping Kings of Iona.