REVIEW: Maggie Estep, Love Is A Dog From Hell

(Mouth Almighty / Mercury)

- Lang Whitaker

Being a revolutionary isn't always the easiest way to reach mainstream success, and even though Maggie Estep has been swimming upstream her whole professional life, she's still making pretty good headway.

Estep is probably most memorable for her spoken word rants that were sandwiched between videos several years ago on MTV. She went on to appear on MTV's forgettable "Spoken Word" edition of "MTV Unplugged", and she then took a spot on Lollapalooza's side stage doing poetry readings. Along with her backing band I Love Everybody, Estep released her first album, titled No More Mr. Nice Girl in 1994. After touring in support of Mr. Nice Girl, opening for bands including Hole, Estep has regrouped with her second effort, Love Is A Dog From Hell.

Love Is A Dog From Hell is a terrific and deliciously crazy album full of weird arrangements and powerful vocals. I can't remember ever hearing anything like this before. Estep talks/speaks on all the songs except one or two. The songs where she sings, her low alto voice sounds amazingly like Courtney Love (before her Oscar makeover).

The poetry is set over an ever changing background of sounds, from the drum and bass of songs like "How To Get Free Hamburgers", which details the workings of the entertainment industry, to the sparse setting of "Jenny's Shirt, a lovely tale of a girl finding long awaited companionship in Paris. The label publicity stuff that came with the CD doesn't ever specify whether or not Estep's old band I Love Everybody is involved with Dog From Hell, but whoever the backing band is does a pretty good job of not overwhelming Estep's stories, which are really the center of this album.

Estep's sense of humor is so dry that it is danger of becoming dehydrated. If Janeane Garofalo ever put out an album, it would probably sound a lot like this one. Estep laces every song with humorous barbs, mostly directed towards the men who have treated her (apparently) pretty badly. Being of the male persuasion, I generally don't relate too well to the Alanis/Liz Phair/Fiona Apple genre, but Estep's overriding sense of humor about everything makes it hard to take any of her digs at men too seriously. On "Emotional Idiot" for example, she recites several standard male pickup lines, but with an irony in her voice that makes the listener appreciate Estep having to sit through the original pick-up attempts. I found myself wondering what happened to the men after they delivered the lines. I could almost picture them being reduced to dust by a glare from Estep.

The most compelling thing about Dog From Hell is the unsettling nature of the whole project. It is cool to finally see someone ready to shake things up a little bit. Uncontent to rely on the tried and true ways of her predeccessors, Estep sets out to blaze a new trail, and blaze she does.