Soul Coughing

Soul Coughing was one of my favorite bands. I only got to see them live once, but I listened to their CDs over and over again for years, and still do from time to time.

I don’t know where Soul Coughing came from, but they sure do come (sorry, Ted Nugent reference). I first heard about them from Laurie Nardone. Laurie was my English teacher for senior year of high school, but it was actually a college class, and Laurie was not the schoolteacher type. She was really damn cool. She taught us how to read critically and punctuate like motherfuckers. She also turned me on to Soul Coughing. For all of these gifts, I continue to hold her in high regard.

You may never have heard of Soul Coughing, and if this is the case, I pity you. Missing out on this band is not something you want. Their music is rich and interesting and varied. You won’t be able to compare it to the formulaic ADD-pop you hear on the radio and TV these days. Still, it might not set you on fire the way it does me. You may listen to a few of their songs decide you don’t enjoy them, but you’ll have widened your experience, and you’ll be a better person for trying to understand what this music means.

So what can you expect?

Magic. OK, maybe you won’t agree, so I shouldn’t promise magic. But I can promise unique. I can promise that you’ve never heard this sound before or since. The music consists of equal parts funk, drum and bass, and cartoon soundtrack. The lyrics are some of the best abstract poetry you’ve ever heard.

Soul Coughing released three albums, and all of them are great. The last disc, El Oso is at once the most commercial and the most challenging, but they all have a lot to offer and reward repeat listening with layers and layers of sound and texture and meaning.

Ruby Vroom

Ruby Vroom was Soul Coughing’s first album, and I played the hell out of that thing. “School Bus To Beelzebub” sounded like a drunken carnival in hell, and the lyrics had to be the most cracked out thing I had ever heard up to that point in my life. My favorite song on the disc back then was “Supra Genius.” The main riff was just too funky - the way the drums played off the guitar and bass unison - and any song with the lyric “You say correlation is not causation,” was sure to excite my geeky side.

Listening to RV now, “True Dreams of Wichita” is by far my favorite track. The minimalist structure, telephone overdubs, and Wizard of Oz reference all touch something that’s hard to describe in words. Everything’s in there, but mostly longing. Serious, intense longing. Longing for love, longing for meaning, longing for I-don’t-even-know-what-I’m-longing-for. I can almost forgive Doughty for kind-of rapping in the middle section. There are so many great images and lines in the lyrics, I could even listen to Brittney Spears sing this song.

I regret that I never went to see Soul Coughing during this period. Laurie actually invited our class out to see them play at the Red Light Cafe in Atlanta, but for some reason, I flaked out and missed it. I didn’t know that they would become my favorite band.

Irresistible Bliss

When Soul Coughing’s second album came out, I did know they were my favorite band. I remember driving between Georgia Tech and the Hashiguchi Jr. restaurant and hearing “Soft Serve” come on Album 88 (Georgia State University’s student-run station). I didn’t know they had released a new album. Most bands didn’t have websites back then, and there was certainly no MySpace, but I recognized them instantly.

There was a Tower Records in the same shopping center as Hashiguchi, so I decided to buy the CD before lunch. I ended up sitting my car, listening to the whole CD in the parking lot and being late for my afternoon Calc 4.

Irresistible Bliss was one of four or five CDs that lived in my car for a very long time. I couldn’t get enough of “Collapse” and “Idiot Kings” especially, but the whole disc was gold.

El Oso

I found out about El Oso quite a while before it was released, and waited eagerly. In fact, I waited in line at Tower Records (the same one where I had bought Irresistible Bliss) after midnight on the eve of its release. The line wrapped all around the store - not for El Oso, mind you - I think a new Janet Jackson album came out on the same day.

El Oso was kind of a strange disc. A lot of people have remarked that it had all the signs of a band nearing the end of their life span, and I’ll agree that it’s extremely uneven. “Circles” had a kind of alterna-pop feel and was even featured on a couple Starbucks in-store-play discs. I worked at Starbucks at the time, and I made rigged the machine to play that song at least once an hour.

On the other end of the spectrum, “So Far I Have Not Found The Science” sounds almost like a demo that was included on the disc as an afterthought. “Pensacola” describes a trip to Wal-Mart. “The Incumbent” was good, but it didn’t need to continue for almost seven minutes.

When I listen to El Oso now, I usually just listen to the middle six tracks, from “Blame” to “Fully Retractable.” I like the rest of the album too, but the first and last few songs don’t seem to give me anything new when I hear them for the thousandth time like “Maybe I’ll Come Down” does. In a weird way, “Maybe I’ll Come Down” sort of reminds me of the Beatles, though I can’t explain how.

El Oso must have been Soul Coughing’s last shot. They went on a pretty big tour to support the album, and I saw them at the Masquerade in Atlanta. I thought it was a great show. I was pleasantly surprised to see Yuval confirm on stage that he never plays the same beat twice. There’s some kind of magic between Yuval and Sebastian that, as a bass player, I can’t help but love.

Unfortunately, it was their last tour, and they broke up shortly after.

Doughty

Mike Doughty released an EP, called Skittish, of songs he recorded in hotel rooms on that last tour. I thought it was really good and listened to it a good bit. But it wasn’t Soul Coughing. Nothing against Mike - I bought his newer CDs and saw him play live a couple of times too - but I really miss the groovy, dirty, Soul Coughing sound.

Sounds like Chicken

Maybe it’s not a sound that is marketable to the music-listening public. I think their songs require a little more effort than most listeners are willing to put in to their music these days. People want background music for TV dramas - they don’t want to sit in a dark room and concentrate on the sound anymore. Soul Coughing doesn’t sound good on a iPod. You can’t feel the thunder of the upright bass or swim around in the synth noise. It doesn’t translate well to earbuds and computer speakers.

But maybe that’s why I still come back to it. The real CD. The sound is so much fuller than .mp3 and Soul Coughing really requires a lot of space for the soundwaves to bounce around. You’ve got to crank it up loud enough that the sound changes as you walk around the room. You’ve got to make it the focal point of your environment - you can’t cheat this music and expect it to offer anything up to you. But when you give it your attention, it gives back it’s own unique presence.

That presence is kind of meaty, kind of greasy, and kind of funky. And it’s good. Give it a listen and see for yourself.