Heard You Whisper

From Don "Hollywood" Adams...

"Thought that I was gonna make A BIG NOISE, but it turns out that I barely made a sound." Angry takes stock of himself here, and finds the cupboards are bare. Every artist struggles with the gnawing idea that maybe they never coulda been a contender. It's an anxiety attack that seems to affect the best for the worse.


HAUNT YOU is an eerie deathbed love curse. "Put your hand on your chest, I'll be there beating in your haunted heart."

In ANOTHER WRECK ON THE HIGHWAY, a doomed driver races toward the vanishing point. "When steel meets bone/and my blood covers the highway/she'll awake from her dreams and she'll know/that I am gone."


MY BIGGEST MISTAKE is another vitreolic dedication. I like to imagine Casey Kasem reading the intro. "Knife in the back, followed by a heart attack."


I'M GONE sounds like a bipolar Bob Dylan. "You can hide my gun/I've got plenty more where that came from/it'll only take but one/to get this job done/and later on you can clean up the stain/but the gruesome fact will still remain."


GAVE UP ON MISSIN' YOU TODAY is a rare Angry relationship tune that pulls out of its tailspin. "I'm a little sad/and I'm kinda mad/but I think I'm mostly glad you went away."


In I WANNA HATE YOU, try as he might, he can't. Not even for a minute, which is how long the song lasts.


AT MY WINDOW is an atmospheric living ghost story that foreshadows the melancholic glory of "Did I See You?"


"I got a full tank of gas, but my heart is running on EMPTY." The world-weariest of Angry's many end-of-his-rope songs, tempered only by the hope that wherever he's going, they might have cigarettes and alcohol.


HAMMER AND A NAIL is an alluring electric funeral procession. "What's that on your lips, babe?/A bloody dried up lie/I'm waiting down in Hell, babe/I'll see you bye and bye."


I'M NOT JESUS casts Judas as a woman. The loss of love is the loss of faith. "There's no Heaven, there is only Hell/Forget all that you learned in bible school."


In WISH I HAD A CAR, a vehicle tops the list, but Angry also wants a gun, a crystal ball, to time travel, and play pool with God. The list is so long, so much is lacking, that there can really only be one answer. "I wish I didn't have to wish no more."


Chris Isaak's evil twin might have written I'M THE ONE, which is either about a lovesick suitor or a hate-filled stalker. The disturbing claim that he has been sent by the Devil AND God tips the scales in the expected direction.


HEARD YOU WHISPER is the last five minutes before midnight, with double-tracked vocals that sound like the poor sucker is being fed his lines by the Devil on his shoulder. "All I can do is stay one step ahead of my demons/I keep pouring the whiskey and praying those bastards will drown."


This release carries the existential angst of OVERCOME WITH LONELY and the heartbreaking candor of THE HIGHWAY AND THE RAIN even further into the shadowy borderlands between this life and the next.


Er, buy it. Now.