Swamp Dogg
Swamp Dogg Contemplates the Afterlife
S-CURVE
Few second acts in American life have been as fun to experience as that of Swamp Dogg, the bluesman turned self-proclaimed king of 1970s sleaze-and-skeeze satirical country R&B who, in 2018, released Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Poliça’s Ryan Olson as producers. Since then, the smooth, salty songwriter worked with Vernon and the lit-folksy likes of the late John Prine and Jenny Lewis on albums such as 2020’s Sorry You Couldn't Make It and 2022’s I Need a Job…So I Can Buy More Auto-Tune, with Lewis also winning a place on Dogg’s latest album, Swamp Dogg Contemplates the Afterlife, as the maestro covers her eerily delicate “Acid Tongue” as something roughly soulful, brass-and-organ grinding, and salvation-filled.
With the aid of empathetic producer and equally magnanimous organist Raymond Angry (to say nothing of his riveting horn charts), Dogg manages to make an afterlife album reflective of decades-after-decades filled with hurt and hurting. Take opener “Searching for Heaven”: With a quavering voice, some oddly on-the-nose lyrics about monies lent, and warm and fluid arrangements that stick to the singer like skin on bologna, Dogg makes a most exquisite point about looking for love and reason in all the wrong places. “If you’re searching for heaven, go home,” he sings. “Somebody at your house knows all your faults and pains / Someone who thinks you’re wonderful, even when you’re borderline insane.”
At 83, Swamp Dogg’s new album title is as achingly ponderous as it is succinct as he takes into account the hits he’s taken (“Knock Knock (Memories)”), the pain he’s doled out (“Unhappy Song”), and the mess he has coming to him in this life (“Please Don’t Bury Me”)—and, very possibly, the next (“Final Approach”). That doesn’t mean that he’s going to bury himself, his bones, or the lead of living life to its fullest until his last gasp (see: “Waka Waka Waka” and “Hot to Trot”), but he certainly sounds as if he’s getting ready to close up shop if he has to, with as much energetic sensuality and elegiac soulfulness as he’s always mustered up.
