Music Notes: Michael Penn, Mr. Hollywood Junior, 1947

May 18th, 2007

= 4 stars

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Music Michael Penn is among my favorite musicians since his debut single No Myth. I’ve bought all his albums since, which isn’t a difficult task, as there are frustratingly few. However, I always felt rewarded despite long waits between, as each was chock full of the singer-songwriter-power-pop goodness I could savor like a thick block of chocolate.

Penn’s stunning album Resigned hijacked the Beatles’ Revolver, with the title’s quadruple pun referring to dejection, “resigning” from RCA, while being “re-signed” to a new label. The fourth pun comes as I recently realized the album’s cover was lifted directly from the television series The Prisoner. The title of his fourth album MP4 is a music file format and an acronym for “Michael Penn’s Fourth.” Song titles had similar literary games, with the punny phrases I Can Tell and Try, featuring glorious inner rhymes like “watch me blink and overlook what I undertake.”

On Mr. Hollywood Junior, much of this careful wordplay is gone. The disc is also painfully short - over twelve songs, three are brief instrumentals. The overall sound is mid-to-down-tempo - the introspection of Bucket Brigade, Long Way Down, and Out Of My Hands distilled to a slow freeze. Sadly, my initial reaction to Mr. Hollywood Junior was not all positive.

But after a few listens, it’s grown on me, to where I prefer it to MP4. Evident is attention to song placement, as some alternate between despair and hope: the truly dejected O.K. (”there’s really not a lot of options open”) is followed by the hopeful On Automatic (”things are looking up in the meantime”).

The most stunning shift is between the excellent Walter Reed (”I’m mad, cause every good thing I’ve had abandoned me) and wistfully nostalgic Denton Road (”if you don’t show that’s fine”).

There’s also a theme linking everything together - the year 1947, just after World War II. Digging a little deeper into what transpired fifty years (before the Maker’s Faire), there are additional hints leading to another layer of creativity. The transistor was invented. Marilyn Monroe had her film debut and was crowned Miss California Artichoke Queen (perhaps inspiration for the song Mary Lynn?). September 18th was enactment of the National Security Act of 1947 which led to the Cold War that would hang over the world for the next forty years.

Anyhow, I feel this attention to detail is worth an extra star. Plus there are three songs I’d call stunning: Walter Reed, Denton Road, and On Automatic, the sort that I hear a few times and think nothing of it, until a few days later I realize the hooks have sunk in. Hopefully they’ll tide me over until Penn’s next album arrives sometime in 2011.

Oh, and why not enjoy this video for Walter Reed which should make a heck of a lot more sense after reading my post.