Bad MonkeyX review of The Downward Road by The Pursuit of Happiness

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TPOH: The Downward Road

When I first bought The Downward Road, I was on my way to the Living Well to meet a friend. I hadn't heard anything from it yet, and I was thoroughly blown away, in a way that happens all too seldom. I stood outside in the cold for ten extra minutes before going in, so I could rewind and listen to Cigarette Dangles and Nobody But Me again on my walkman. Whenever I see this album in a shop, I momentarily consider buying it,even though I already have it. I love this record. It makes me want to bang my head.
A criminally overlooked album, The Downward Road was released in 1993. I had great hopes for the band's busting open in the States (why do we care? money, I guess. numbers). Cigarette Dangles was played on Beavis and Butthead ("Huh huh. College music.") The cover's poster was product-placed on the wall of the mental inventor in Ace Ventura. Axl Rose was singing their praises. Berg was writing with Kim Mitchell (at the time that seemed like something.) The concert was great, and TPOH put out their best ever shirt ("TPOH makes me hard"). And then, "like that --", it was gone. Apparently they were fucked over circumstantially by their label (read this article) -- but even knowing this, I'm mystified.
The Downward Road is TPOH at their best. The lyrics are edgy and good humoured ("Nice guys finish last -- Good goin' asshole!"). The guitars are unrestrained and heavy; and there are more choice hooks on this album than on any other TPOH record. And while the album plays smoothly, a unified whole (broken only by a long guitar duel between Berg and Todd Rundgren, which is justified at least by its title: Love Theme From TPOH), the songwriting is varied in a way only met by 1997's The Wonderful World....
In Her Dreams is a bizarre, effective experiment in rock-country (as opposed to country-rock). Heavy Metal Tears boasts Moe's first falsetto, and Forbidden World musically captures B-Movie mood such that The Tubes might have been jealous. Crashing Down succeeds at the 'white rap' that "White Man" attempts on Where's The Bone (and beautifully captures the cost of a bender:
	A few beers later I felt like mating
	I asked the girl how old she was 
	She told me she was eighteen
	Good thing I found out before I got her home
	But I forgot to get my change from the cab driver, oh no
	The bartender and the convenience store clerk
	It's getting expensive being such a fucking jerk
			Crashing Down)
Honeytime, detailing a bout of impotence, makes the only truly dirty Winnie the Pooh reference I've ever heard. This album, I think, is the only one of the five TPOH records that matches its sexual self-effacement equally with its sexual energy, that really melds the two major themes of Moe Berg's songs, sex and sexual anxiety. The closer, Terrified, nails the point home over a screeching, frenetic pair of guitars:
	You can sleep till noon, you can drink out of her shoe
	Run your fingers through her clothes
	Spray yourself with her perfume
	And you'll never know, never know
	Man I never know 
	What to do, what I do
	To make you come unglued
			Terrified.
The song ends on a feedback whine that plays on thirty seconds longer than the song, and the effect when it ends is one of breathlessness. Whew.
This is the band's best lineup, as well. With two members gone to start up Universal Honey, Brad Barker joined to replace Johnny Sinclair on bass, and Kris Abbott stepped up to cover more of the vocals (and play lead on Terrified). Rachel Oldfield sang backup here before joining the roster proper on Where's The Bone. The combination of all these elements lined up well in rock-heaven, if not in money-success heaven, to become this fine, fine album. It's worth a listen if you missed it, and a re-evaluation if you just missed the point. If anyone knows where I can get me one of them shirts, lemme know.
TPOH: The Downward Road. Polygram, 1993.
Review by jep clayton, BadMonkeyX. 1st issue, January 2001.