Reading Josh Cox's press packet, it's interesting to see that he is "a drop-out of the University of Virginia." Ironically, he makes the grade with his new album "The Aluminum EP."
Cox, a solo artist, usually only plays by himself, and rarely in public. That's a sad fact, considering the energy he was known to put into his live performances at the Greenstreet Cafe in Augusta, GA. His onstage intensity is reminiscent of another J.C.-Pulp's Jarvis Cocker.
Perhaps it's this same charisma that allows Josh to gather cameos from members of two other impressive Michigan bands. DJ Surreal of the newly Atlantic Records signed Howling Diablos provides the beats for "Mackinaw Lamentation," a charming, if perhaps too safe, anti-love ballad about a paralysis of the heart. Rock McClain of the now defunct Sensitive Clown (a VH-1 Battle of the Bands finalist) provides banjo and piano on the instrumental "Flagstaff Bedsprings," which haphazardly captures the flavor of a Hurricane, the staple drink and storm of New Orleans, the city in which it was recorded.
It's difficult to classify Josh Cox's album. There are elements of drunken Cajun jazz, '80s simplistic pop, shouting gospel, bad R&B, even worse rap, Dr. Demento level production, and yet this hodgepodge manages to be entertaining as all hell.
The disc's winning ingredients are its eclecticism and fun-spirited attitude. "The Bong Song" is a parody that would make even Wierd Al envious. But just when the disc seems to delve into the gutters of humor, we are met with the beautifully spacious "LeeAnn," a strikingly haunting ditty recited with Leonard Cohen pathos. Oddly enough, the song describes a woman who teaches monkeys to play video games.
It's when Cox's voice is controlled that it is at its most evocative. It feels like Cox attempts to touch all borders of the musical landscape and this effort saves him from the rest of the independent label pile. "Pank Drank," an obscure, roaming, Casio keyboard driven song, sounds like something Beck would have recorded in the '80s for inclusion on the soundtrack of a Cameron Crowe film. Its chorus of "Did you edit it? I edited it," is nonsensical, but attentively conscientious to poetic sound. Cox is the Gertrude Stein of lyricists, more concerned with word than meaning, creating textures rather than telling stories, as, say, his antithetically fellow Michigan counterpart Eminem would. In fact, with tracks like "My Name is Cowboy," in which Cox basically spends a half minute making fun of Kid Rock, it seems that he is attempting to subvert the very Detroit scene from which he indisputably stems. With the MC Paul Barmaid flow and rhythm without blues, Cox is turning Sisqo's nauseating pop music on its pierced ear. But braving new styles can sometimes produce chaotic results that might better be scrapped, e.g. the atonal and endlessly repetitive "Baby Momma" and the aptly titled "Odden," which come across as inside jokes that exclude listeners.
But Cox's adventurous spirit shouldn't dissuade the alternative music addict from purchasing the album and enjoying its little pleasures, such as the Gap Band composition meets Motley Crue exposition that is "The Discotheque Lounge"
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