Dave Mehling reviewed
Dave Mehling
How Do I Make You Lonesome?
(self-released)
Minnesota singer-songwriter teeters on the brink for a tension-filled debut.
What holds Mehling’s new album together is exactly that which pulls it apart. By the end of the second song, “It’s All Been Done,” he and band sound as if there’s no one in the club to watch them, they’ve been thinking of breaking up, and only their animus keeps them onstage (if only he’d been smart enough to cut his “That sounded good” quip at the end). I hate to drag Alex Chilton into this, but like Big Star’s Third it almost doesn’t matter what Mehling sings — How Do I Make You Lonesome? is less about its songs than its performance. Some of it was tracked in an old city building (presumably in hometown Duluth), and the ambience gives the lived-in “Morning Sun” a classic feel, not so much in the Rhodes piano (which always does the trick), but Jeramie Olson’s loose drumming. It can be frustrating when Mehling’s efforts to match Jeff Buckley or John Lennon are overt (the title track, “Mrs. Robinson”), and at 52 minutes Lonesome hits some dry patches. But maybe knowing he’ll lose your interest helped this album manage its delicate balance.
— Steve Forstneger
