Rating: NNN
Bay Area punk pin-up boy and one-time hairstylist Seth Bogart, aka Hunx, gets deep on this solo album recorded without the aid of his all-girl “punkette” backing band. Bogart’s early work sometimes felt secondary to his trashy aesthetic and campy gay humour, but with each album his music becomes more personal, the songwriting more refined, his nasal croon more plaintive.
While last year’s Hunx and His Punx LP, Too Young To Be In Love, nodded to 50s girl groups, Hairdresser Blues courts an equally fun, nostalgic garage pop sound but skips ahead a few decades to incorporate jangly riffs from 80s indie pop. It’s a quick, occasionally dirty and sweetly affecting collection of ballads about ill-fated romance, the Bay City Rollers and letting go of love. It’s as if he’s revising the timeless, sugary pop hits of the past with the bluntly man-on-man subject matter we wished it had had back then. Better late than never.
Top track: Set Them Free
