Kowtow Popof

about

Over the course of 8 long-players of original music spanning a couple decades or so, Washington, DC-based songwriter Kowtow Popof has been labeled as both “unbearable sap” (Washington City Paper, 1997) and “underground icon” (babysue/lmnop, 2013). Kowtow prefers “underground sap.” His career has been mostly an experiment in multi-track recording, influenced by the music he’s become a fan of along the way. If Cat Stevens jammed with Wire, and Elvis Costello twiddled mixing-board knobs while Gary Numan looked askance at the whole thing, then you might be thinking that’s what a Kowtow record sounds like. Of course none of that would seem particularly disparate from Kowtow’s perspective. Each record has been an effort to mix up all of those influences to produce the album in his head. In the early days, you got the electronic folk that culminated in 1992’s Songs from the Pointless Forest, a clash of seventies singer/songwriter with eighties punk/new wave. 1996’s Coaster channeled Americana and tales of broken romance (this is where the unbearable sap label comes in) while taking some cues from more surreal sources (Kowtow’s signature tune “I Am Thinking of My Darling” took its title from Vincent McHugh’s 1943 “happy zombie” novel). End of Greatness (2006) and Exalted Headband (2009) were vocal and instrumental sides of the same coin, treating the end of love and the ends of the universe as part of the same cosmic fabric. Kowtow’s latest record, Tastes Like Armageddon, out now

top songs

albums

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After Hours: A Tribute to the Music of Lou Reed

End of Greatness

Exalted Headband

Eat My Dust

Coaster

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If I Were A Richman / A Tribute To The Music Of Jonathan Richman

Songs from the Pointless Forest

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If I Were A Richman

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If I Were A Richman: A Tribute To The Music Of Jonathan Richman

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A Punk's Garden of Versus

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13 Daze of Xmas

Kowtow Drops the Pop Off

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