Whilst he dares dub his fourth longplayer Mr. Serious, once more, within,
Minnesotan maestro Mark Mallman, now two
albums into his self-styled reinvention as '70s-piano-rock
power-balladeer, is having a gay old time. Now ably able to adorn his frowning
brown with the Queen-ish crown of flamboyant showman, Mallman has the onions
to evoke
Elton John and Joe Jackson on a set of songs that trade in lusty
piano chords, warbled vocals and fruity guitar solos, climbing into
the aesthetic jumpsuit and jumping into a set of songs so strident
they'd make that bloke from The Darkness blush. If you don't think this
ebony-and-ivory get-up is a conceptual reinvention, I guess you haven't
heard the anecdotal evidence of Mallman's onstage antics, which are
conceptual enough to be more art happenings than anything as dreary as
rock shows. For example: a 12-hour sample-oriented set
from inside a 6'x2'x3' refrigerator box. Which is nothing compared to
his musical Marathons. In 1999, Mallman and a rotating cast of
helpers played for 26 hours and 20 minutes without break. Feeling that
such a set record could be in danger, I guess, in just this September
past Mallman decided to double such, dialing up delirium as he stayed
on stage for 52 hours and 40 minutes; starting out with a song (scrawled
in pen over 600 pages) detailing his entire life, and that life's
obsession with death, before putting his childhood and his Freudian
fixations on the musical back burner, moving into freeform Floydian
freakouts for the "overnight" shifts, then coming to a rousing
conclusion more than two whole days after he started. With idiotic
devotion, Mallman's conceptual thinking and the seriousness of his campy
artist's intent can't be questioned — even if these stern credentials
don't really come across at all on Mr. Serious. Given that the disc's musical
modes go for moods that feel "fun," Mallman is happy to knock out
blocked-out piano odes that go through Brill Building chord changes,
glam-ish strut, scorching guitar licks, and all kinds of layered-on
harmonies, such stylized tricks used as stripes to clash with the
spotty oddity of his intermittent lyrical wit, his words (sung in a
hoarse voice, vocal cords run ragged by the Marathons he's scaled up his
conceptual Mount Olympus) offering aching self-analysis even whilst the
musical gaiety frolics in the (trivial) pursuit of happiness.
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