Andy the Doorbum - Art is Shit

Charlotte is notorious for cannibalization.  Not in the literal, humans-eating-humans, Alive sense of the word; figuratively speaking.  Architecturally, politically, culturally, this town has a strange appetite for the past, gobbling it up and shitting it out in forms unrecognizable.  It’s this cannibal factor that makes our local music scene seem bland and atrophied when graded against the national curve.  It’s what allows the button downs to function so comfortably, offering them the pastel tones and the hard lines and the granite countertops they find ever so welcoming.

Certainly this isn’t absolute.  There are pockets of resistance to be found, usually in the late hours of the evening, in a smoky bar or on an intimate patio or in some fanatic’s living room.  Just beneath the surface of all this city’s blasé window dressing, there is a glorious DIY veneer, dirty, vital and beautiful.

This aspect of the Queen City is typified in the music of Andy The Doorbum Fenstermaker.  Familiar as the guy who takes our money at the World Famous Milestone Club, Fenstermaker performs skewed and hilarious dirges of brazen lyrical fortitude.  With the aid of friends, The Doorbum cut a record throughout ’05 and 6, titled The Mt. Holly Sessions - a remarkable achievement in its own right - and embarked on tours both local and global.

Now Andy’s back, offering an unabashed masterpiece in his latest recording, Art is Shit.  By any estimation this is an epic, comprising 25 tracks in just over an hour.  The songs range from fractions of a minute (“Burn Barrel”, “Dutch Response 1568”) cycling through tunes of a minute or three (“Join the Great Majority”, “Love Song for Cigarettes”, “Albert”) upwards to arrangements of four and five (“Catching the Moon in a Mason Jar”, “Faith Heal’t”).  Across this spectrum Andy cuts a wide stylistic swath, armed with his trusty acoustic guitar and his busker gruff voice, supplemented with drums, keys, samples and even a xylophone, melding elements into a cohesive whole most musicians ruin entire careers in pursuit of.

It’s definitely acquired taste, and sure to offend the delicate sensibilities of most radio listeners, but to the punks and hipsters and rock n’ roll niggers of this banker burg, Andy could qualify as our very own leper messiah.  Although his language is at times coarse and his voice abrasive, that’s all part of the fun, and if you pay close enough attention there is no shortage to the nuggets of wisdom contained herein.  “Passion’s not enough to save the world,” Andy declares on his opener, “so fuck it, do you wanna buy some drugs instead?”  This is an affirmation.  This is a mission statement.  Andy’s strength lays in exposing not only the hypocrisy of a society that rejects his ilk, but the contradictions that litter his own life as well.  This is paramount to the joke Fenstermaker plays on his listeners: he makes punchlines of us all, but by including himself he becomes the most relatable, approachable, likeable freak at the ball.

To dissect the record track-by-track is a futile disservice to its brilliance.  While no pretentious “concept album” any further than it is a really fucking good record, the thing functions best as an inseparable whole.  In this attention deficit world, filled with IPods set to random and glib quotes substituting for insight, it’s too easy to fall into that trap of capsulation.  No, The Doorbum is something of a gold standard in his timelessness.  This could easily be music made by a 19th century coal miner or something.  It truly is a relic of a time unknown, possibly nonexistent.  It is a bizarre curiosity from a junk shop, an odd relic in the attic of a dead relative, something to be treasured and absorbed on a front porch or a dark bedroom or that aforementioned smoky bar.  Passion might not be enough to save the world, but music like this is enough to save your life.