Donovan Beat Cafe

The minstrel many of us know as Donovan has struck a new pose in his latest recording for an interesting and important independent label, Appleseed Records.  The album, appropriately titled Beat Café, is a collection of tunes written between 2002 and 2003 that celebrate the times of the beat generation thus making this recording a throwback in style.  Which is quite a new thing for Donovan.  In the liner notes of the album, it is stated that we, as a culture, experienced a liberation when the triumvirate of beat writers appeared, namely, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Kerouac.  With their new ways of expression, our culture began an evolution of freedom, a breakout of repression, if you will.

Donovan’s Beat Café revisits the now removed style using sparse instrumentation just as it unfolded in the days of Beat. The songs are jazzy in feel with a bare minimum of guitar, bass, drums, and keys just as would be in such an atmosphere.  Donovan sings with beatnik cool; breathy and entertaining while the drums keep simple time, the bass reverberate, and the keyboards provide that smoky café loneliness.

The album begins with “love floats”, a simple tune that hints of psychedelia with the wisps of cigarette (or whatever) smoke, contagious and infectious as it moves along.  “poorman’s sunshine” sounds a little like a beatnik Elvis.  We begin to get familiar Donovan with “beat café” while the theme of the album begins to slip into a comfort zone.

There are 9 more songs, some that remind you of Donovan greatly, incorporating a distinct 60s sound.  You’ll hear this in “yin my yang”.  Others take on a very cool and familiar beat style like the great Dylan Thomas penned poem on dying, “do not go gentle”, which is spoken singsong.  This is exactly the way that it must have worked in those infamous dens of intellectualism and expansionism.  You’ll be exhilarated as the disc moves from song to song.