Johnny Coley - Mister Sweet Whisper
LP
Order
Transcendental poetry meets Southern Nightmare Jazz on the third album by Alabama-based artist Johnny Coley
Mister Sweet Whisper is the meeting of poet & artist Johnny Coley and the band Worst Spills, led by guitarist & arranger Joel Nelson. (Imagine “King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown,” but more like “William Burroughs Meets Lounge Lizards in Ghost Swamp”). Mister Sweet Whisper centers Coley as a gifted writer and unique elder voice, supported by an eclectic cast of friends & collaborators.
Tapping into French surrealism and transgressive American poets such as John Ashbery, the songs in Mister Sweet Whisper evolve, cinema-like, with Coley as an uninhibited, almost mystical, narrator. Textural, noirish playing complements Coley’s decadent landscapes, which glide by like cigarette smoke invocations. Echoing, and at times, dissonant notes of saxophone, crystalline tones of vibraphone, and jagged guitar arrangements punctuate Coley’s dreamlike visions, populated by ballet dancers, haunting nightclubs, and ghostly car drivers.
Wistful and expansive, the songs in Mister Sweet Whisper speak of Coley’s talent and natural ability to channel his poetic world into songs. A remarkable follow-up to Coley’s first two albums—Antique Sadness, from 2021, and Landscape Man, from 2022—which were praised as “exquisitely haunting, sublime, hilarious” and falling “somewhere between Robert Ashley, David Wojnarowicz, and Intersystems,” Mister Sweet Whisper arrives in full form: unpredictable and brilliant.
LP comes with a 4-page booklet featuring artwork and writing by Johnny.
Co-released by Mississippi Records & Sweet Wreath
“No one ever finishes that jigsaw puzzle sky. There’s always a piece missing,” says Johnny Coley, midway through ‘Wrong Dollar’, the opening track on Landscape Man. Spoken over a fabric of wilted, morphing country, plucked mandolins and bouzouki melting into swirls of slide guitar, his snaking narratives sit in the middle ground between weighty existentialism and vulnerable perplexity. His lines have a rambling quality, but that penchant for digression is a strength. A radical move in a world which over values simple answers, Coley invites us to search out questions with him rather than prescribe narratives to us. While the trippy soundscape from his musical collaborators is surreal, Coley’s words are not hallucinatory, they’re deeply personal incites, anecdotes effortlessly slipping from the mundane into the philosophical. It’s clearest in the awkward romance on ‘Soundbodies,’ the album’s closing track. “I forget about crumbling, rotting infrastructure because my baby taste’s so good.” Coley’s words are laden with doubt, they’re written from a position of admitting perplexity rather than claiming authority. Embracing mystery and sharing the act of thinking through it.
-Quietus review of Landscape Man, November 2022
LP
Order
Transcendental poetry meets Southern Nightmare Jazz on the third album by Alabama-based artist Johnny Coley
Mister Sweet Whisper is the meeting of poet & artist Johnny Coley and the band Worst Spills, led by guitarist & arranger Joel Nelson. (Imagine “King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown,” but more like “William Burroughs Meets Lounge Lizards in Ghost Swamp”). Mister Sweet Whisper centers Coley as a gifted writer and unique elder voice, supported by an eclectic cast of friends & collaborators.
Tapping into French surrealism and transgressive American poets such as John Ashbery, the songs in Mister Sweet Whisper evolve, cinema-like, with Coley as an uninhibited, almost mystical, narrator. Textural, noirish playing complements Coley’s decadent landscapes, which glide by like cigarette smoke invocations. Echoing, and at times, dissonant notes of saxophone, crystalline tones of vibraphone, and jagged guitar arrangements punctuate Coley’s dreamlike visions, populated by ballet dancers, haunting nightclubs, and ghostly car drivers.
Wistful and expansive, the songs in Mister Sweet Whisper speak of Coley’s talent and natural ability to channel his poetic world into songs. A remarkable follow-up to Coley’s first two albums—Antique Sadness, from 2021, and Landscape Man, from 2022—which were praised as “exquisitely haunting, sublime, hilarious” and falling “somewhere between Robert Ashley, David Wojnarowicz, and Intersystems,” Mister Sweet Whisper arrives in full form: unpredictable and brilliant.
LP comes with a 4-page booklet featuring artwork and writing by Johnny.
Co-released by Mississippi Records & Sweet Wreath
“No one ever finishes that jigsaw puzzle sky. There’s always a piece missing,” says Johnny Coley, midway through ‘Wrong Dollar’, the opening track on Landscape Man. Spoken over a fabric of wilted, morphing country, plucked mandolins and bouzouki melting into swirls of slide guitar, his snaking narratives sit in the middle ground between weighty existentialism and vulnerable perplexity. His lines have a rambling quality, but that penchant for digression is a strength. A radical move in a world which over values simple answers, Coley invites us to search out questions with him rather than prescribe narratives to us. While the trippy soundscape from his musical collaborators is surreal, Coley’s words are not hallucinatory, they’re deeply personal incites, anecdotes effortlessly slipping from the mundane into the philosophical. It’s clearest in the awkward romance on ‘Soundbodies,’ the album’s closing track. “I forget about crumbling, rotting infrastructure because my baby taste’s so good.” Coley’s words are laden with doubt, they’re written from a position of admitting perplexity rather than claiming authority. Embracing mystery and sharing the act of thinking through it.
-Quietus review of Landscape Man, November 2022