The Point Is

Even if he’s been at it for a while, Dov Davidoff’s debut album seems a little premature. It has plenty of promise but Davidoff’s unique style — a self-deprecating New Jersey lunkhead way high and weird on too much coffee — cracks once in a while as the real Dov — kinda Vin Diesel — shows through. It’s jarring when he’s thrown off, but luckily it doesn’t happen often enough to spoil what is an otherwise exciting and mostly funny act that’s this close to being perfected. One last complaint about The Point Is is that it’s poorly mixed with way ambient chatter bleeding through as the audience slowly drifts and loses interest as the act enters its fourth quarter. All that aside, it’s fascinating to hear odd observations — sometimes even Emo Phillips odd — come out of a character who could be one of those antsy new recruits bugging Tony on any given episode of The Sopranos. It’s this wild delivery that carries his more hackneyed material — complaining how Starbucks refuses to acknowledge Large in lieu of Grande — while it adds some much needed charm to the provocative jokes which run from the usual big boobs stuff to the unsettling world of Ray Charles’ problems with women. Davidoff is fine with homosexuals because it means more women for him and as far as racism, he just can’t stand those Swedish and all their candy fish taking everyone’s job. When his flow becomes more natural, his albums will be more desirable but his debut casts him as “one to watch,” underlined twice. – David Jeffries