Everything about Dudley Saunders is off, sometimes a good deal so, from that enticing voice to the unorthodox rhythms, colors, and atmospheres that then slip sideways into a set of lyrics frequently raw and disturbing. Don't be fooled by the hypnotically shimmering vocal refrains and interlocking guitar chords ... Saunders is exploring the darker corners of the psyche and culture with a set and grim death's-head grin, a psychologist's fascination for the aberrant in deceptively firm resolve, nostrils flaring. The lovely chamber strings and lamentive minor chords? They're meant to lure you into the composer's webwork of madness, seamy side streets, subtle transgressions, and forever menacing shadows with their smackling lurkers...

There's a good deal of John Cale's gentleman lunacy here, a poetic line spilling the borders of Keith Reid over into an urban Jean-Paul Marat by way of Krafft-Ebbing, John Rechy, and William Burroughs. The listener who becomes captivated by the gauzy textures of Saunders' musicianship quickly finds himself walking on broken glass with predators kneeling nearby, waiting...

You've never picked up on music quite like this before. Art bearing such a shape and form—imbued with weird and shuddersome insights sticky from the viscid belly of psychotic experience, sometimes even dungeonesque grue—has been tried every once and again but never with such lissomely shocking deception. Trust me, this has rarely ever been done, and THE GUY'S FUCKING BRILLIANT at it.

He may remind you of a Shawn Phillips by way of Tim Buckley and Kenny Loggins, but that shadow over yonder? It hides a chuckling Donatien Alphonse Francois. You know him as the only surviving child of the Comte and Comtesse de Sade, and he's cackling, holding a curious item. It may well be something you'd rather not see…but you'll enjoy it anyway, though probably in the dark and uneasily.

Dudley Saunders started as a New York City performance artist, but the music he created for his act took on a life of its own, and now he's a recording artist with three CDs under his belt. This, his latest, is the first I've had a chance to hear, and it bears out some of the flattering words Saunders has gotten in the mainstream press. His voice has a tight quaver and a lot of focused power, like Jeff Buckley's... Saunders's material [is a] cross between modern folk and art song, it has a timeless quality, a soothing sound partially masking a humming tension. His voice is a finely tuned, subtle instrument, and his images flow like water:

See the way he snaps you back to the scene at hand with that last line, like an actor with an audience in his hand... The visceral lyrics of these songs sometimes remind me of Leonard Cohen: "take me back home / 'cause you're the only rider / on the highway in my bones" ...

"This is a scary beautiful dream, the images float past and disturb, the world is slow motion here the colours are bruised rubbing into each other, chalk in the rain on city streets, sometime just before the morning.

This is a haunting love story, the characters are wounded and bear the weight of Love in all its fierce brutality.

This is a collection of songs about the people behind locked doors, or hidden in crowds or just out of sight.

Dudley Saunders though sees it all, them all. The world, the flaws and the wonder.

A mix of subtle rock frenzy and cinematic orchestra, the faces the bodies, swoop past, the lyrics sink in the mind slow and sweet and the voice, Saunders not so secret weapon, hooks us so we cannot turn away.

A contender for one of the NBT albums of the year. This CD slow burns harsh comfort and strange desires.

It seems the second it is played, that, it has ALWAYS been there.

Brilliant."