By M. Ireri Rivas on November 7, 2011

Fitting with the graying of the season’s Seattle-based King Dude will release his first full length LP –yep, there is a fondness for the vinyl format here- on November 5^th on Dais Records. King Dude is TJ Cowgill who, besides making amazingly eerie music during his free time, makes fashion and delights his home base with death metal from Book of Black Earth.

On first listen to his new album “Love” it was easy for me to say it took me back to my wannabe goth days, but on subsequent listens I realized more and more the album was more reminiscent of a time of all-consuming heartbreak. “Don’t Want Me Still” sounds like folk music from the desert, something to be played when in a great vast open and deserted space. The lyrics are eerie and elusive illustrating the singer’s detachment resulting from rejection. In “Lucifer is the Light of the World” the idea of love is reconstructed to reveal, “Lucifer is the love of the world.” “Hello Mary” continues to challenge notions that equate love with happiness by relating the desperation of one who cannot reach the object of his love. Here, the singer vows to give his life a thousand times over for just one “look in her eyes.” It is certain by the tone and melodies that this is a failed prospect; his love will not be reciprocated.

King Dude’s new LP “Love” best describes that certain level of pain that is comforting. Numbing, might actually be a more fitting descriptor, but I remember a time when I felt comforted in imagining myself crawling under a weeping willow and wallowing in my sorrow until the end of time. Whether this album –had I had it at that time, and listened to it obsessively as I’m sure I would’ve- would have helped me out from under the tree or pushed me further back into the depths of pain, is something I can’t know now.