Richard Duguay puts the pedal to the metal and speeds straight into a Beautiful Decline on his new album — premiering exclusively on Tinnitist.
A darker and more menacing followup to his 2019 release Bad JuJu, Beautiful Decline recaptures the dangerous thrill of early Alice Cooper, with catchy guitar riffs blazing over top of bottom-heavy grooves rooted in old-school R&B. The album’s 11 unique tracks guide the listener through haunting melodies and scorching riffs that melt into acoustic bridges, sparking bursts of unexpected acoustic charm. Loaded with hooks and dynamic arrangements, these songs range from harmonic ballads to all-out rockers, with plenty of memorable lyrics along the way. And a killer Alex Harvey cover to boot!
Of course, it’s just the latest instalments in a career that stretches back decades. Duguay’s punk roots run deep — he started his storied career with legendary Winnipeg punk powerhouse Personality Crisis, whose devastating 1983 album Creatures For Awhile remains prized by punks and collectors. Following PC’s breakup, Duguay did some work with an obscure L.A. band called Guns N’ Roses, contributing fretwork to their cover of the Johnny Thunders classic You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory on the 1993 EP “The Spaghetti Incident?” He has also toured the globe with Guns’ bassist Duff McKagan. No big.
While you blast Beautiful Decline on repeat via your preferred device, read through Duguay’s track-by-track liner notes:
1 | Wasteland
“A straight-up rocker. The bassline was the first thing I came up with, followed closely by the first line: ‘I never met a sucker who didn’t have it coming.’ It reminded me of a W.C. Fields quote for some reason. It was written right after the last album Bad JuJu was released. The video for Wasteland will premiere April 25.”
2 | The Faith Healer
“I was a big Sensational Alex Harvey Band fan in the ’70s. We’d always play them at parties. Usually the girls would hate it and want to take it off in favor of The Bay City Rollers … haha. One day on Facebook someone posted The Faith Healer, and while watching/listening to it I realized that it would fit right in on the new record. I immediately got ahold of my pal Meher Steinberg to play the keyboard bass part as well as the organ. It came together pretty quickly after that. This was the first song that Brian Irving (who played pretty much all the drum tracks on the album) played on. I knew Brian was the right drummer after tracking this one. Great fucking drummer.”
3 | Kid Stardust
“I was fucking around on piano and wanted to do a chromatic walk-down verse pattern just to do it. My motivation was a Motown vibe — My Girl by The Temptations to be exact. It didn’t turn into anything like a Motown song, but that was where it started. The title Kid Stardust, I’ve had for a long time, and it really helped with the lyric writing. The first line of the chorus is: ‘Tame the windless wild.’ I fucking love that line. No idea what it means, but that never stopped me before. My wife Paula Tiberius thought it was kinda dumb until I got her to sing on the chorus. She had smoked some weed and apparently the line made total sense to her then. She’s gonna bust my balls for that, but that’s OK. She thinks the ‘windless wild’ is outer space now, which I guess makes sense with the stardust concept.”
4 | Prepare The Dogs For War
“One of two six-minute songs on this record that have multiple parts and moods to it. Some people that heard early versions of it said I should cut the intro out so it would get to the verse sooner. Hell no!! I’m not subscribing to that method of songwriting these days. If the song pushes me in a direction, I follow it. One person told me they thought it was a love song. I certainly didn’t see that, but that’s the power music has. Everybody interprets it differently. The first line of the chorus is: ‘If you would give your life for me … ’ Not your average love song, is it? Hahaha. I think I was going for a vampire romantic thing, maybe?”
5 | Get In Line
“Partially inspired by the Jan. 6 riots and its aftermath. Some great lyrics from my collaborator Marc Floyd: ‘Spaced-out graveyard ghetto … Dogstar lead the way.’ So good. The chorus is straight-up The Cult. There’s a bad-ass bridge in this that I love! A circular guitar riff that just keeps going. I do my best Jim Carroll poetry thing over it. We made a video:”
6 | I Gotta Move
“A hybrid rocker mix of Alice Cooper, The Hellacopters and Raw Power-era Iggy & The Stooges. A driving one-note piano in the chorus. What’s not to love? R.D. Cane did this video:”
7 | Widows Walk
“The shortest song on the album. Paula and I duet on this one. ‘Soar high, look down and bear witness / Rise up, untangle the skies … ’ There’s also some Bob Dylanesque B3 in there, reminiscent of Like A Rolling Stone. I didn’t think it needed anything else.”
8 | Beautiful Decline
“Someone asked me how could a decline be beautiful? Hell if I know … I’m writing and producing the best music of my life right now, and it feels pretty damn good. ‘We bow down to nothing, our ignorance divine / When all that’s left is a beautiful decline.’ Beware of false idols.”
9 | Never Ending Parade
“This ones about the realization I came to at age 60 that the passing of family, friends and acquaintances isn’t going to stop until one day it’ll be me. Well, at least that’s what the title is in reference to. This is probably the best example of my collaboration with Marc Floyd. It has a cool bridge breakdown that sets up the guitar solo. We made a video for this one:”
10 | Double Up The Ante
“I wrote the lyrics to this on the train down to Mexico. They just started coming and I kept writing. I pretty much wrote the first two verses and chorus right then. It’s a bass-driven song, as it really pushes the song along all the way through. I’m not sure who The Mirror Man is, but apparently he’s coming down … The music in the outro sounds like a Henry VIII-era thing to me. That’s a strange reference.”
11 | Eyes Of Silence
“I like to end my albums with ballads. Just seems right to me. This is an older song that never got done properly. We tracked bass and drums for it but it just didn’t sit right. One day in frustration, I muted the drums and bass and there it was. I got Meher Steinberg to add some piano and that’s all it needed. The old adage of less is more. This one is a love song full of dark drug references, but it’s still hopeful. The guitar solo references Somewhere Over The Rainbow and echoes Jeff Beck in places. It’s a nice mellow way to end the album.”
