Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947

Like nearly everyone else who knows the name (and many who wouldn't remember it), I first heard Michael Penn in 1989 when his "No Myth" was all over pop radio. I deeply hated that song for about ten years; it's hook line "What if I were Romeo in black jeans" rubbed my anti-fad streak in every wrong direction. In 2000, however, I suddenly fell in love with it when I heard it again on an '80's compilation disc I had borrowed. Word plays like that of the line "If I dig a hole to China, I'll catch the first junk to SoHo" had missed me when I was a teen, and the song's basic issue--post-romance relationship--was not part of my experience then. I didn't rush out and buy a Michael Penn record, but I became willing to hear him. Trouble was, I didn't get the chance for several years.

In a spring episode of House (one of the few shows I love which has a fan-base broad enough to avoid the fate described in the post below), Penn's "Walter Reed" served as soundtrack to a pivotal scene. I didn't recognize the voice, but the lament of a returning soldier stuck in my head for days. "For platform and for passerby," he says, "it's the same routine: I'm ranting while I'm raving... Tell me what more do you need? Take me to Walter Reed tonight." Finally, I tracked it down and bought the album it leads off, Mr. Hollywood Jr., 1947.

A concept album, each track exists in the world of Post-WWII America. Like "Walter Reed," many of these songs reflect a disillusionment of the era. The speaker in "Pretending" admits to his lover, "the words that I say are not for you but for that costume," and that of "Denton Road" confesses, "I don't need another speech to know I'm out of reach."

In songs like "Mary Lynn," however, hope rises to the surface. "If you'd only stay the night," the speaker implores, "you'd see it's not so black and white." "On Automatic," the final proper track (there are one or two hidden extras, depending on the release) leaves all worry behind: "Maybe I'm about to tank, but everything'll turn out fine. Things are looking up."

Penn manages this range of emotions with a voice I can only describe as layered. These aren't the pretty vocals (from a prettier face) of an American Idol, but those of someone with enough depth to actually write a song and then shape it with his soul. Each character in the conceptual cross-section is made real, believable, and distinct as Penn manipulates his tone from the defeated bitterness of "You Know How" to the manic carelessness of "Room 712, The Apache."

Admittedly, this is a dark record, but it's darkly beautiful and speaks to the heart of much which is as relevant to our time as to the era it purports to inhabit. We, like Penn's characters, are struggling with the unintended consequences of war. We have won victories at great cost and sustained defeats to which we don't know how to react. Of course, this is always true of a dynamic society, and that's why I expect I won't grow out of this record the way I grew into Penn's earlier work.

If all this sounds just too darn depressing for you, I also recommend Penn's Free-for-All. I recently picked up a used copy for a buck, and I'm slowly coming to love it. It has all the musical delights of Jr., but it's content is far more pop/upbeat. Its "Now We're Even" also contains one of my new favorite lines, "Crow tastes like chicken meat."