Angry Johnny & The Killbillies – What’s So Funny?
When first hearing that there would be no chainsaw mayhem on the new Angry Johnny album (the previous one, Hankenstein, had two separate songs about chainsaw murders), I feared the Angry one might be trying to clean up his cruddy act. Doesn’t Angry realize that when chainsaws are outlawed, only outlaws will have chainsaws?
But by the end of the first verse of the first song (“All American Girl”), when the heroine’s brother has decapitated a cat, it’s obvious that Angry Johnny has not been rehabilitated.
In fact, like its predecessor, What’s So Funny? is a booze-fueled (mis)guided tour deep into America’s underbelly, an excursion into a disturbingly familiar netherworld, alluded to in the cartoons of Al Capp, Big Daddy Roth, and S. Clay Wilson, where behind every shadow is the reek of incest, ignorance and unspeakable violence, and where the only source of hope is the proclivity to laugh. Wicked laughter, nervous laughter, mindless laughter — whatever pulls you through.
With guests including Eric “Roscoe” Ambel on guitar and Hammond organ and augmented on some tunes by a Tom Waitsian junkyard horn section (called “The Killville Volunteer Fire Department Auxiliary Marching Band”), the Killbillies sound tighter than before, though they haven’t lost that element of inspired slop.
The standout track on this album is “High Noon In Killville”, a seven-minute crime in progress, a first-person, banjo embellished account of a botched robbery that suddenly turns into a hostage situation. By the next-to-last verse, the singer has decided to throw down his gun and surrender to the corrupt and brutal Sheriff “Big Dick” Turner. As Angry bellows, “Please don’t cut me down!”, a listener almost expects to hear a hail of bullets instead of an instrumental break.
There are more songs about murder (“Kill Again”, “Sent Him Home”), necrophilia (“My Ghoul Maggie” — not a high point), death on the highway (“Devil’s Run”) and, of course, obsessive love (“Won’t Get Me Out Of Your Mind”, “A Love More True”).
In short, it’s crazy shit. But few do crazy shit better than Angry Johnny.