Seth Bogart’s adult life features bullet points that almost parody the “typical” things an out gay man, Californian and artiste might find himself doing: a day job as a hairdresser, a night job inside the musical alter ego of “Hunx” (who issued the 2012 album Hairdresser Blues), the creation of a clothing line, a move from San Francisco to Los Angeles…
Now, Bogart adds more not-atypical bullet points by emerging from the Hunx persona (who also recorded and toured as frontman for the bubblegum-punk band Hunx and His Punx), foregrounding his real name and shifting his music closer to a dancefloor vibrating to New Wave, post-punk and the quirkier sort of indie pop.
After the aggressive anger of Hunx and His Punx’s 2013 album Street Punk, the Tinkertoy electronics and lighter feelings of "Seth Bogart" sound like a half step backward, creatively. Many beats resemble presets from 1980s Casio keyboards, and many of the programmed dots, loops and squibs seem random.
Some vocal choices also seem random: “Club With Me,” a perfectly competent techno track, employs voice distortions that can’t be compared to anything else besides the Chipmunks, while on the goofy “Eating Makeup,” Bikini Kill and Le Tigre lady Kathleen Hanna wails as if imitating a 12-year-old Cyndi Lauper.
Occasionally, Bogart makes everything fall together, as he does with the thriftily snappy groove and droll Auto-Tune of “Smash the TV,” or with a guitar lick and melodic chirp that somehow wrap 1970s Graham Parker and mid-1980s Cure into the relatively neat package of “Plastic!”
Those promising songs indicate that Seth Bogart is reasserting the sonic identity of the man for whom it is named. The identity, however, remains a work in progress, and maybe the next Seth Bogart LP will fill in more of his persona and his personality.
|
|
