Freedom Is… - 2000
John Doe is still burnt, imperfect and miserable. Freedom Is, Doe’s second release first with X-mate DJ Bonebrake on drums and with The John Doe Thing, is as usual brilliantly messy Doe business. It’s full of songs about making your life better, messing it up, and always losing and gaining faith as you crawl back home on your knees and hands, searching for redemption in a decent kiss or a bedside telephone. In his been-there-drank-that voice, Doe always lets you hear it too, in the way he can sing with a cracked, angelic grace over waves of fuzzed-out guitar electricity, then slide into the kind of life-torn howl that’s as close to freedom as a beat-up punk heart can ever expect to get.
FREEDOM IS… moving from acoustic introspection to powerful electricity which has great dynamics. Doe specializes in romantic anguish. You perhaps won’t appreciate what he’s doing if you haven’t ever experienced that. For the rest of us, he’s tapped into it in a way that reminds you your pain is definitely not yours alone. If he turns up at a club in your town, don’t miss John Doe, he is one of the best.
Album tracklists:
1. Catch Me
2. Someday/No Day
3. Beat-Up World
4. A Picture of This
5. Telephone by the Bed
6. Ever After
7. Ultimately Yrs.
8. When No One Cares
9. Smile & Wave
10. Too Many Goddamn Bands
11. Drift Away
12. Glass-Phalt
13. Totally Yours
14. Sueltame
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