Shooting At the Sun With a Water Gun

Including three records with his band, Sunbrain, Shooting at the Sun With a Water Gun makes the sixth release from David Dondero since 1993, but that prodigious output doesn't dull the edges of his songwriting in the least. Indeed, the 11 songs here ring abundantly true and seem to emerge from the bottomless wellspring of an odd-job and barroom-chat existence. Dondero had long lived a troubadour lifestyle à la obvious influence Townes Van Zandt prior to recording Shooting, and that reality comes out in the acoustic minimalism of the music (although a few songs, like "If You Break My Heart," have a fuller and modern-tinged production) as well as in sharply observed, occasionally pointed songs like the quirky, dialogue-driven "The Real Tina Turner" or "Love." "The Waiter," in fact, could be a lost Van Zandt outtake, and if it sounds a bit too similar to the foot-stomping, country-blues side of that legendary songwriter's compositional output, it is still a wonderfully rambling, road-ready tribute. Even better, though, is the autobiographical "Analysis of a 1970s Divorce," which references Van Zandt without aping his style, and turns what could have been a painful personal outcry into a wonderfully warm-hearted account of a tricky subject. Much of the album, though, is cast in a much bleaker musical light, with a production that completely suits the tone: withered but resolved guitar strumming, the occasional harmonium wheeze or organ fill, and mournful fiddles. "This World Is Not My Home" features the same neo-Depression genuineness — not to mention the stark instrumentation — of Gillian Welch's songs, but even when the music doesn't mimic the sonic quality of Appalachian music, Dondero's striking country-folk has the visceral punch and wellspring of soul-cleansing emotional depth of that great musical legacy. Other songs are even more whittled to the bone, like the frightfully forlorn "The Lonesomeness That Kills" and the almost narcoleptic "Proposal," neither of which, to the good credit of Dondero, dwell on the authentic suffering and desolation at their hearts. And that is the wonder of the album. It is never stripped of energy or humor, as a skittery, scatting song like "Pied Piper of the Flying Rats," with its finger-snapping West Side Story swing, ensures. In fact, Shooting, even in the face of its most forlorn moments, sounds positively triumphant — entirely human.