Fusing unplugged guitars, honesty and street smart wit, The Josh Joplin Group combine their slightly bent storytelling style with rock 'n' roll intensity. Useful Music is the finest fruit of that collaboration. Two highlights of Useful Music are singles for which the group enlisted ex-Talking Head Jerry Harrison as producer. With Harrison (Live, No Doubt,Verve Pipe) achieving a riveting interplay of sounds, Matter builds on a trenchant bass-line as gorgeous back-up vocals highlight some of Joplin's most assured singing (a haunting spoken-word interlude adds mystery and texture). Inspired in part by the movies of Paul Thomas Anderson, Camera One, a tale of hard-life dreamers and suicide, of a "sandy haired son of
Hollywood," a "trophy wife in Palisades" and a soul who "sells star maps to the sun." Josh describes the song as "the illusion of fame as validation of being" and measures the costs of fantasy as call-and-response vocals and an irresistible rhythm guitar power the music forward.
Shawn Mullins (best known for Lullaby), a Josh Joplin Group supporter since its inception, produced the bulk of Useful Music - and helped give its distinctive sound, while still allowing Joplin's indelible vocals and guitar playing to be clearly heard. Those songs range from I've Changed, a testimony to the power of renewal ("...everything I thought before/I won't think anymore")
