Josh Doss

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Flying way under the radar, this tape from Lexington songwriter Josh Doss snuck out on Was Ist Das last month and its packed with hazed late-night gems tipping on a fulcrum of damped down boogie blues and sore-throated Americana. Doss’ delivery has a way of sounding like your old Tom Petty tapes got left in the dust and sun too long, crackling and warbling with a slow draw delight. Aesthetics aside though, Doss knows his way around country-twanged chooglers that swagger with a strange menace, shouldering their way through fellow patrons to dance woozily in the open floor of last call calm. Doss breathes worn leather epithets over a simple setup that favors plodding bass and copper strums. The fidelity’s got all the charms of room mic house show capture, but that humble draping seems to suit Doss just fine. Sheen would only make these songs squint.

Though he draws from a wealth of ‘70s outlaws for inspiration, on a contemporary level the album feels like a kindred spirit to the great and elusive Golden Gunn LP that saw Steve Gunn and Hiss Golden Messenger team up a few years back. Like that treasure, Don’t Let Your Time Pass You By is bound by a debt to the night, to the bar and to the dirt. It reeks of loose tobacco, wooden bar tops that can’t let go of last night’s beer and the dank, humid cold of mid-October at 3AM. Already feeling like a private press holy grail in its own time, Doss’ cassette is worth digging up while it lasts.




Support the artist. Buy it HERE.

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