THE DUKE LISTENS TO
THE HANDLER
BY HAR MAR SUPERSTAR
THE HANDLER
BY HAR MAR SUPERSTAR
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.
“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 the first track on this record,
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 epitomised 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.
This is nothing less than electrifying. The only damn thing I can
think of by way of a problem, is that it’s two months overdue. This
shit should have been the soundtrack to the summer, the record
blaring and gyrating from every street-corner a fella might
encounter. I mean, I know it’s the “LA record” and all that, and the
first time you lot seen a damn snow-flake was that film where Tobey
Gyllenhal runs about the place in fear of The Snow What Killed The
World, but still. It doesn’t feel like October music. It feels like
it should be flung into a cryogenic chamber and thawed out only on
days when the sun is so maliciously potent that the only way to
combat its malignant evils is to strip off on the sidewalk and douse
yourself in industrial-strength liquor.
Except The Duke would be doused in industrial-strength Diet Coke, and
I wouldn’t be stripping off either, on account of this deal I got
going with Playgirl that means I can’t expose more than 3% of my
flesh unless it’s in a centrefold.
Sorry, folks, but a fella has to make a living somehow, what with the
wife / kids / bills/ miscellaneous.
The Handler is giddily infectious, joyous, blessed with the kinda
gargantuan hooks that would scare the shit out of even Orca, The
Killer Whale, and he don’t give a damn bout no motherfucker.
It knows not to outstay its welcome, also. Less than fifty minutes
pass between the first notes and the last, and the effect is that you
crave more. More, for Gods sakes Har Mar, don’t leave us now, like we
were some skank you picked up off The Strip, and now you’re heading
off into the night once more for to administer back-breaking pleasure
to someone else.
How many contemporary records leave you wanting more? Most times,
it's a case of “Yeah, that new Oasis / Metallica / Ian Brown would be
brilliant if they’d just flung off tracks C, F and most of J through
W.”
You don’t want to skip forward at any point. In fact, you wanna press
the back button every time a track ends, want to savour it for
another couple minutes before the next one arrives to tickle you
afresh.
Listening to this, The Duke began to understand why the sight of Har
Mar naked but for a pair of white Y-Fronts gets roomfuls of the
ladies screaming with glee. That four-month residency in Ibiza
started to make sense. I figured out how those support-slots for
folks like The Strokes led to the rapid cultivation of a legion of
fans, how a fella who takes as his inspiration the work of “Prince,
Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Chaka Khan, Tina Turner and Elton
John” was getting roaring applause from audiences filled with 15-year-
old hooligans in Dropkick Murphys T-Shirts.
I mean, why wouldn’t they worship the ground Har Mar trundles across?
That image, man, it’s the image of a production-line worker. It’s the
image of those folks front-row at those concerts, seeing themselves
reflected back in a way which, for all their outsider credibility,
most rock-stars can’t ever achieve.
Who looks at, say, Eminem and thinks about, yeah, he obviously never
got a shag in high school?
I haven’t heard Har Mar Superstar’s previous albums, the self-titled
debut and the follow-up, You Can Feel Me, and I’m kinda scared to.
The Handler is such a perfect, perfect thing that I’m scared to wreck
it all by uncovering something wholly detestable in the back
catalogue.
For now, these 12 numbers, from the jaw-dropping Transit to the
final, pathos-drenched Alone Again (Naturally), these will do just
fine. It’s a gorgeous, life-affirming slab of sex-obsessed wonder, is
what.
And incidentally, now that I think about it, I really want that
motherfuckers’ babies.
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line
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.
“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 the first track on this record,
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 epitomised 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.
This is nothing less than electrifying. The only damn thing I can
think of by way of a problem, is that it’s two months overdue. This
shit should have been the soundtrack to the summer, the record
blaring and gyrating from every street-corner a fella might
encounter. I mean, I know it’s the “LA record” and all that, and the
first time you lot seen a damn snow-flake was that film where Tobey
Gyllenhal runs about the place in fear of The Snow What Killed The
World, but still. It doesn’t feel like October music. It feels like
it should be flung into a cryogenic chamber and thawed out only on
days when the sun is so maliciously potent that the only way to
combat its malignant evils is to strip off on the sidewalk and douse
yourself in industrial-strength liquor.
Except The Duke would be doused in industrial-strength Diet Coke, and
I wouldn’t be stripping off either, on account of this deal I got
going with Playgirl that means I can’t expose more than 3% of my
flesh unless it’s in a centrefold.
Sorry, folks, but a fella has to make a living somehow, what with the
wife / kids / bills/ miscellaneous.
The Handler is giddily infectious, joyous, blessed with the kinda
gargantuan hooks that would scare the shit out of even Orca, The
Killer Whale, and he don’t give a damn bout no motherfucker.
It knows not to outstay its welcome, also. Less than fifty minutes
pass between the first notes and the last, and the effect is that you
crave more. More, for Gods sakes Har Mar, don’t leave us now, like we
were some skank you picked up off The Strip, and now you’re heading
off into the night once more for to administer back-breaking pleasure
to someone else.
How many contemporary records leave you wanting more? Most times,
it's a case of “Yeah, that new Oasis / Metallica / Ian Brown would be
brilliant if they’d just flung off tracks C, F and most of J through
W.”
You don’t want to skip forward at any point. In fact, you wanna press
the back button every time a track ends, want to savour it for
another couple minutes before the next one arrives to tickle you
afresh.
Listening to this, The Duke began to understand why the sight of Har
Mar naked but for a pair of white Y-Fronts gets roomfuls of the
ladies screaming with glee. That four-month residency in Ibiza
started to make sense. I figured out how those support-slots for
folks like The Strokes led to the rapid cultivation of a legion of
fans, how a fella who takes as his inspiration the work of “Prince,
Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Chaka Khan, Tina Turner and Elton
John” was getting roaring applause from audiences filled with 15-year-
old hooligans in Dropkick Murphys T-Shirts.
I mean, why wouldn’t they worship the ground Har Mar trundles across?
That image, man, it’s the image of a production-line worker. It’s the
image of those folks front-row at those concerts, seeing themselves
reflected back in a way which, for all their outsider credibility,
most rock-stars can’t ever achieve.
Who looks at, say, Eminem and thinks about, yeah, he obviously never
got a shag in high school?
I haven’t heard Har Mar Superstar’s previous albums, the self-titled
debut and the follow-up, You Can Feel Me, and I’m kinda scared to.
The Handler is such a perfect, perfect thing that I’m scared to wreck
it all by uncovering something wholly detestable in the back
catalogue.
For now, these 12 numbers, from the jaw-dropping Transit to the
final, pathos-drenched Alone Again (Naturally), these will do just
fine. It’s a gorgeous, life-affirming slab of sex-obsessed wonder, is
what.
And incidentally, now that I think about it, I really want that
motherfuckers’ babies.
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line
