Har Mar Superstar, let's not act like a bunch a lying communists, doesn't look an awful lot like the "typical" rock star. He doesn't look like the sort you expect to see when you turn on the MTVH-1 or whatever it is that The Kids watch nowadays, unless maybe in an advert for piles-removal cream that might appear in-between the new Usher and D12.
The only time you would imagine a fella like Har Mar standing in front of a few thousand paying fans, is maybe if a band from the late-70's have reformed and you go see them, and then afterwards you say, "Yeah, it was alright, but it's a shame they didn't have the original singer", and then someone nudges you and says "Shit, man, that was the original singer! It's just that he's had three decades of drugs / liquor / burgers dripping in rancid grease since then."
When you look at the cover of his new record, The Handler, you get the feeling he should be playing a hobbit in some demented Abel Ferrera adaptation of Lord Of The Rings, rather than rocking, rolling, all that tomfoolery.
"Show Bilbo how you suck a dick."
The result of this is that if you saw the pictures, or read one of the interviews, and if you knew that first track, Transit, has a call and response sing-along along the lines of; "Har Mar is so sexy… I wanna have his babies", a fella is likely to bust a liver laughing and guffawing and deriding and so on.
The amazing thing, though, is that by the time said moment arrives, roughly two minutes and 40 seconds into the album, you're already more than willing to join the roomful of lassies hollering these once unfathomable sentiments.
Yes, Har Mar, you do get all the ladies! I do want you to touch me!
The Handler, y'see, is the funkiest, most thrilling white soul record The Duke has heard in as long as I can even be arsed to remember. This is white soul, white funk, that unashamedly bows in awe-struck reverence to Prince, rather than the kind epitomized by an unwholesome percentage of George Michael's recorded output, the kind that sounds like a sonna bitch moaning and wailing and yacking about Jesus Is My Child or some shit. The kinda nonsense that only an impromptu fiddle in a public piss-hole will sort the hell out.
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