POP MUSIC REVIEWS : McCarty Gives Voice to Johnston Songs

Bob Dylan has Joan Baez and Judy Collins. Leonard Cohen has Jennifer Warnes. And now Daniel Johnston--an Austin singer-songwriter cult hero--has in Kathy McCarty someone to bring his music to people who might find his own idiosyncratic performances not to their taste.

But Dylan’s and Cohen’s interpreters tend to smooth out the artists’ distinctive characteristics. McCarty, both in concert at the Alligator Lounge on Friday and on her new “Dead Dog’s Eyeball” album, recasts Johnston’s often childlike delivery and petulant imagery in “professional” settings, without diminishing any of the on-the-edge impact.

Johnston, like Brian Wilson, has battled mental illness, and his songs, like Wilson’s most probing work, have a sometimes frightening depth, a sense that joy and terror are just a heartbeat apart. Friday, Austinite McCarty and her three accompanists never lost that sense, even as they swerved across a wide stylistic landscape--from the quirky, brainy rock of McCarty’s old band, the underappreciated Glass Eye, to Patsy Cline-like torchisms.

“Daniel’s led a very colorful life, in contrast to my own,” McCarty said from the stage.

But she’s capable of more colorful music and the match produced a vibrant rainbow.