Hi, How Are You - Daniel Johnston

Hi, How Are You by Daniel Johnston is his 6th self released cassette album, recorded during September 1983. Instead of focusing on piano or chord organ like his other albums from around this time, he experiments with noise collage and a bit of guitar playing. Two of the tracks actually feature him singing along to an instrumental LP by Johnny Dankworth. 

This album is definitely one of the weirdest I've listened to, besides Against The Day by Land of Kush. With that one, it's strange because it's a mix of 60's Egyptian jazz and modern western music, but with Hi, How Are You it's odd in a different way. Upon first listening it was so bad. Like just awful honestly. He can't really sing, his instruments are out of tune, the actual quality of the music is just awful, I mean it was literally recorded straight onto cassette and you can hear the tape clicking the entire time so much that it pretty much distorts his voice. Some of the songs are about 20 seconds long. It took looking into the story of Dan Johnston and reading the lyrics to "get" his music. He's really struggled with mental illness and these songs that he wrote around this time give an insight into his downward spiral. There's a documentary called The Devil and Daniel Johnston that goes into this really well. 

After taking the time to try and understand this artist, I can say I get it. It's definitely an unconventional way of music, but what I like about it is that it's raw. He's not trying to hide anything, he just writes songs as he feels it. I give this album 4/5 stars and I guess I would recommend it to anyone willing to give it a try.