Mike Doughty

Fri., Nov. 27, 7:30 p.m., $30-$40, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215-222-1400, worldcafelive.com.

by K. Ross Hoffman

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Published: Nov 23, 2009

singer/songwriter

Mike (then M.) Doughty might've been ahead of some kinda curve back in the '90s, when observers of his quirky-jerky verbalism fronting Soul Coughing — perhaps the most genuinely intriguing band to hit alt-rock radio (remember "Circles"?) in its groovy, late-decade kitchen-sink phase — invoked the term "hipster" in a manner eliding the considerable gap between its original 1940s definition (jazzbo/beatnik) and the more familiar, then-nascent sense (Brooklyn scenester). Lately, as he admitted in a recent interview: "I feel kind of neglected by the smart people." That, despite the healthy cult that Doughty, a stalwart smarty in most senses of the word, has been building at least since his remarkably touching solo debut, Skittish, in 2004. Following a few more wanly received, instrumentally fleshier intervening releases, the agreeably glib Sad Man Happy Man (ATO) oughtta perk up a few neglectful ears, largely stripping back to his essential ingredients of acoustic guitar — played in the chunky-funky style he's copped to having cribbed from New School classmate Ani DiFranco — and that voice: grainy, insistent, muscular; spouting manically canny, sonically hypnotic verbiage with a gleefully geeky (and presumably unhip) intensity of engagement. Nowadays, his words mean things (mostly things about addiction and girls), sometimes, but they're almost better when they don't: "muckety-mucks," "vehicular," "harum-scarum." He sings: "Got words/ but not loquacious." Yeah right.

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