CJ Leon’s Street Corner Gothic

*Free Download at myspace.com/cjleonspoken

Writer & Composer Clinton John Leon has a new album out, and it’s filed under the new-to-me genre of Gothic Jazz. Emotive, simplistic, effective, and impractical, with lyrics that’ll make you give your head a shake at times. So sad, but funny and sincere in its dark originality. There is humour in bleakness.

With song titles like “Hot Stalker”, “Whore Babylon Blues” and “Dying Too Slowly”, you can’t expect party rockers on this album. I found a touch of Tom Waits in some of the tracks; especially in the way CJ describes his seedy scenes and characters. There was no Waitsian Growl to be found, although I think he could probably pull it off.

Listening to the track “My Music” gave me a glimpse into CJ’s life. He sings, “Nobody gives a damn about my music, but I don’t really have a choice. If I don’t write, and I don’t sing it, I can’t sleep, and get hemorrhoids.” Seriously, that’s gotta suck.

This album left me wondering, who is this CJ Leon? By googling him, I found out he has released quite a large amount of material. 3 CDs of music and spoken word, along with books, an industrial noise project that intrigues me, and a slew of videos. The more I listen & watch, the more mysterious he seems to be. Another hidden gem presents itself in this crazy city.

Diagnosis: Street Corner Gothic isn’t going to be everybody’s cup of tea right off the top; it’s not music you’d listen to all the time. I’m going to recommend this album for fans of strange, vaudevillian-type music, or anyone who wants to escape into someone else’s skin; into his extremely dark sense of humour; into his dream world. This guy is a seriously skilled spoken word artist with some extremely well written pieces. Either way, you can’t go wrong with a free album download.

His youtube videos are entertaining to watch, a sequence of vignettes describing the brutal urban truth of poverty and drug addiction, for example. There’s lot’s more out there from one of the quirkiest, most interesting multi-format artists I’ve encountered in a long time. I’d like to see some live beat poetry from this guy in a club downtown or something. Hey Skinny!