Through his band Hunx and His Punx and on solo projects as Hunx, Seth Bogart evoked the era of matinee idol worship while referencing retro pop oddities, girl group harmonizing and early rock.
On his first solo album under his own name, the songwriting is just as sharp and hooky and the emotions sometimes just as plaintive, sad and angsty as on past projects. But this time Bogart hits upon the most fully realized pop idol version of himself by embracing the demented, neon-coloured camp aesthetic he’s always loved.
The self-titled album plays up his obsession with artifice on Hollywood Squares, Plastic! and Eating Makeup (featuring Kathleen Hanna), which call back to the early 00s when punk went DIY pop, giving rise to Le Tigre and Tracey + the Plastics.
The music shares the scrappiness, distortion and tactile qualities of those earlier acts but adds a ton of gleaming studio tricks – Auto-Tune, new wavy synths and illustrative sound effects – that crank up the zaniness without eclipsing the underlying earnestness. Granted, if you’re a Seth Bogart fan, your threshold for zaniness is probably higher than most.
Top track: Forgotten Fantazy
