New York City-based bluesy singer-songwriter Mishka Shubaly vividly depicts a life of hard drinking, disintegration, despair, unpaid bills and hardship on his first full-length album, How to Make a Bad Situation Worse. Shubaly is is one part Tom Waits, one part contemporary Delta blues desperado and one part Shane MacGowan. And like Waits and MacGowan, Shubaly has undeniable optimism and literate humor running through these dark gutter narratives. Shubaly has a gift for quotable, droll asides. On opener, "The Only One Drinking Tonight," he admits he'll "settle for a tall glass of anything" and confesses, "If I'm a bad drunk, then it's not for lack of practice." During hangover blues ballad "Kick Off YR Halo" he concedes, "I want to die, but I'll settle for sleep" and "I'm still alive or what passes for it." Shubaly's rough but sympathetic barroom voice suits his tragic tales, particularly on the records' best songs, "When I Was Young," which is a tribute to a friend who overdosed; and road-weary roots rocker "Gideon's Bible"
