Denis Coughlin's maturing folk pop

Nocturnal Pop Journal is actually Denis Coughlin's fifth disc, but "two of them are kind of weird." He did a record with The Speakeasy Jazz Band as well as a commissioned record for a foundation that used people from the foundation to sing on it. That was followed by All Over Again and I Go Wild, in 2001.

It's been a while, but Coughlin's thrilled to be plugging his Nocturnal effort, which he recorded at Tremolo Lounge with Roger Lavallee. Unlike I Go Wild, which turned out to be an "800-pound amorphous blob that swallowed my life," Coughlin says, this one was exceptionally focused. He recorded one night a week for six months.

Denis Coughlin

It is a collection of songs that came together, partially, from Coughlin taking lessons with guitar monster Joe D'Angelo. For anyone who's ever taken lessons from him (or even listened to him), they know that it's not all about typical progressions and taking the easy road up the neck. "I was supposed to be taking lessons with him," laughs Coughlin, "and he would show me the mixolydian scale and I would just write a song and bring it to the lesson. You can just sit there and drink coffee for an hour, and he'd show me stuff, which was cool, and so I'd put it into a song. It wasn't long before Joe and I had songs that I was supposed to have done for lessons. He really liked some of them, and he convinced me to rein in the groove."

Folk singers, Coughlin admits, tend to have sloppy right hands. "You can imagine why," he says, "and mine was as sloppy as any. My left hand was pretty good." He did rein in that groove, and played weekly gigs with D'Angelo at The Webster House, and when Lavallee strongly suggested he get a band for his recording — rather than tackling all the instruments he had in the past — Coughlin enlisted everyone's favorite drummer Billy McGillivray and bassist Dave Martel. The songs sounded good, and even better when local singers Dawn Sweet and Jessica Rawding fattened the vocals and gave them sassy attitude.

Coughlin is a master of painting a scene or sentiment into a memorable sing-along folk/pop number (i.e. "Strong Enough") — he can write the kind of tunes that make you envision a little band in a cabin with a wood stove, animals quietly creeping up to the walls, only to be invited in to strum along. But he's stepped more into the jazz realm this time around, too — particularly with songs such as the swaggering Steely Dan-ish "Bruno" (love this one), "Feathers and Fur Coats" and swinging "Ruby Emerald Pearl." The result is a 10-song collection that is a sharp, whimsical, cohesive set.

"‘Ruby' has a sharp 11 in there," says Coughlin. "That's Joe's influence. Instead of having an Am and D going to the G, he'd have me play an Am7flat 5, go to a D9 and a G13. That just adds those tensions. Those tensions and that dimension. But you can't go, ‘Well, I'll throw in as many as I can.' Then you have mud, and believe me, Joe would raise his eyebrows because sometimes I tried to do too many of them."

Celebrate the release of Nocturnal Pop Journal this Saturday, Oct. 6, with a show at The Green Rooster Coffeehouse (located in the United Congregational Church at 6 Institute Road) at 8 p.m. This is also the Green Rooster's seasonal opener. o

— Charlene Arsenault