MICHAEL KNOTT
COMATOSE SOUL
2005 Blonde Vinyl Recordings
Purchase: michaelknott.com
Review by: Steve Ruff
This album dropped sometime in 2004 and I didn’t actually get it until 2005… I wish I had heard it sooner. This is probably my favorite Knott solo album. Actually, Michael is backed up here by a bunch of guys that are really talented. Andrew Prickett plays guitar, as does Shawn Tubbs, Frank Lenz is on drums and percussion, as well as several others that play on the album as well. If memory serves me correct, Shawn Tubbs was in the original Violet Burning line up… anyway, back to Mike Knott.
This album is full, coming in at thirteen tracks. The music here is solid and the lyrical content is some of my favorite. The themes are diverse, but the lonesome and heavy hearted tracks are abundant. The music ranges from what I would call ‘rock n roll dirges’ (Comatose soul, The Down, Pale) to more pop oriented tracks (Pusher, Lollipops & Daises, Finding Angel) and some acoustic influenced stuff as well (Boxcar, Frequency). The song Gold sounds like it has a pretty heavy Beatles influence and Cruz ‘n Ride sounds like it could have come from the Aunt Bettys era.
Again, the lyrics on this album really stuck with me. Knott sounds very introspective on this release, but you can never really be sure who he’s singing about. Michael has always had the uncanny ability to write poignant songs about the everyday events that we see, and that most would probably not even notice. Check out the lyric from the title track:
“If I could reach through these eyes, and hold the very part of her that the world has broken…
I wish I had hands
I wish I had hands to heal this life
And I wish I had strings
I wish I had strings to tie high
This comatose soul”
This record was my favorite purchase of the year when I got it. If you don’t have it you can still scoop it up from Michael’s website (http://michaelknott.com). Buy it, plug it in, take a deep breath and enjoy…
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