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Michael PennMr Hollywood Jr 1947 SpinArt/Stomp Michael Penn, younger brother of Sean, is kind of the male version of his wife Aimee Mann: he writes these gorgeously literate, beautifully constructed, Beatles-esque songs filled with cascading melodies, snappy lyrics and deft arrangements, and barely anyone gives two shits about him or his work. He's part of that little enclave of similarly-talented LA performers that includes the likes of Mann, Jon Brion and Andy Prieboy, who are all godlike genius singer/songwriters, all have uniquely dark, skewed takes on their craft, and all hopefully have other sources of income. At least Mann and Prieboy have 'Til Tuesday's Voices Carry and Wall of Voodoo's Far Side Of Crazy respectively, while Brion did the score for 'I Heart Huckabees' and so presumably they all get some sweet royalties every six months or so. Despite major label tenures, Penn's lacking that one signature hit - and things aren't going to change with the release of 'Mr Hollywood Jr 1947'. It's a beautiful record, an almost concept piece about the US's loss of innocence post-WWII, and has a couple of downright excellent songs in the ballad You Know How (which contains the nifty line "When you think he likes you, then you like the way he thinks", which I wish I'd thought of first) and the slightly more upbeat A Bad Sign whose neat harmonies remind me - of all things - of the interplay between the Johns Flansburgh and Linnell in They Might Be Giants (and there's something distinctly TMBGish about lyrics like "'Evacuate the premises and take what you can carry' / says a voice that sounds an awful lot / like it's for real, but it's not"). It's not going to change the world any more than his previous four albums, and the period-setting intermissions are a little over the top (yes, we get it, 1947, very clever), but this is a genuinely lovely record.  |
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