3 out of 5

Label: ‘a’ Recordings LTD.

Produced by: Dave Doughman & Rick McPhail

Dave Doughman’s SAM essentially has four different types of songs: electric guitar with and without drums, and acoustic guitar with and without drums.  He’s stretched this simple setup across a slew of EPs and several albums and years, each release contributing a couple of great tracks to the world, if not sometimes nigh an album’s worth.  But it all falls back on the balance of these different song types, and whether or not their sequencing serves Doughman’s tales of drinking, touring, girls and drugs.  ‘While Laughing’ is, unfortunately, hindered by this qualification, knocking out a solid EP worth of material before song placement massively slows things up midway through and starts to feel repetitive.  The latter half of the disc still definitely has some quality tracks – especially the relatively epic ‘Wasting Your Time’, but they feel somewhat out of place all the same, perhaps owing to the album being written, apparently, over the course of the 8-year hiatus between this release and the last.  Still, SAM fans know the Doughman sound, the catchy plucking or rocking riffing, and we’ll take what we can get.  ‘Joker’ is pleasingly slim in the one-liner songs Dave sometimes falls back on (one line repeated over one catchy – but also repeated – riff), and like the classic ‘Number Seven Uptown’ album, uses those moreso for stepping stones than trying to pass them off as full tracks.

If the first 8 tracks are bundled together as another blearily snarky and bleak travelogue EP, with the remaining tracks of ‘Joker’ viewed as B-sides or demos, this ranks up there with SAM’s bests.  But that’s not what it is.  It’s intended as a whole album, and the way it’s stitched together unfortunately makes it stumble in that attempt.