David J

Driving away from the scene of an accident, windows glittered in rain, David J contemplates the power and celebrity causing the pileup. The Guitar Man is this conceptual narrative in hardback, an EP of beautifully orchestrated eyeliner folk that should satisfy the Love and Rockets faithful. The curtain opens with the wide hope of "The Guitar Man," slide guitar carrying the song's mood alongside Dave Navarro's surplus of lead. "The Dope Show" finds The Guitar Man coveted by those in his flashbulb wake, Marilyn Manson's glam bluster stripped off so you don't see them coming. "The Auteur," a haunting Pygmalion rewrite, melds lonesome pedal steel with swelling viola and cello; its alter ego, "The Auteur, Thievery Corporation remix," is dizzy dilated eye trance. All punk vibration and busting steam-pipe percussion, "Mickey Rourke Blues" is a snapshot of tan ankles in Italian shoes, cigarette bruises, and the 405 looping overhead like a concrete rainbow ("Hanging out on Española Way/It's better here, fuck L.A./Who needs an Oscar anyway"). The Guitar Man ends, your only company the deserted acoustic hooks David J left behind, like a sliver of Earth Sun Moon all over again.