Seth Bogart (2016)

"You’re a member of a punk band (Hunx and His Punx) with a cult following. You’re also a hairdresser. You want to make your first album under your own name – Seth Bogart – shedding the Hunx persona. So what do you do? You make a weird-ass pop album full of attention-grabbing music and provocative lyrics. Mostly, it works. Somehow. It’s difficult to describe just what you’ll find on "Seth Bogart". There is an ode to cuckoldry, a club jam full of flagrantly false braggadocio, and the single about a woman’s addiction to eating makeup. It’s no coincidence that Bogart is using Pee Wee Herman’s aesthetic to bring this album to life in art installations. “Eating Makeup” has vocals that are sung in falsetto and slightly off-key; it sounds like that something that could be played in the Mos Eisley Cantina. I can’t say that I love the song, but it’s so different than anything I’ve heard recently that I appreciate it immensely. There are many more WTF (has Marc Maron trademarked this yet?) moments on the eponymous album. I haven’t listened to anything like this in a while. However, he can write songs with the best of them. He doesn’t need all of the distraction and camp that fills the rest of the album, but it sure makes it fun. Bogart lets it all hang out there but still manages to make highly engaging and listenable music. That’s a tall order. This is a potentially influential album in its risk-taking and broaching topics that don’t typically get mentioned in popular music." (The Fire Note, 4 uit 5 sterren)