DANIEL JOHNSTON – Is And Always Was – CD – EYE125

The biggest, greatest news about Is and Always Was is that it does it right, beautifully and unawkwardly– something that, if I were producer/musician Jason Falkner, I might be prouder of than having played with Paul McCartney. The record avoids the old mistake of thinking that Johnston is a “weird” musician and therefore needs a weird backing, or that he’s a “raw” musician and needs a scrappy one: Johnston writes pop songs and loves the Beatles, and on this record he gets the rich Beatlesque pop arrangements that are surely in his head. They even find a sweet spot between forcing too much personality into the instruments (and having them overwhelm Johnston) and not putting in enough (so that he sounds like he’s singing karaoke); sometimes a little bland or obvious, but in a good spot. This is as much as I’ve ever heard Johnston sound not like an individual, not like someone who’s being supported, but like the lead singer of an actual band, one he’s really part of– a great, strange, and ambitious psychedelic band. Even amid the grand, triumphant rock pomp of the closing number, Johnston sounds like he’s really, genuinely in it.

Nitsuh Abebe / Pitchfork