As you can hear, it's a seamless mix of Face to Face and Revolver era Kinks/Beatles, and I think it's a fricking little pop masterpiece. Endlessly inventive, too; the way the guitar riff starts to walk on the last verse, and then those off-in-the-distance "wah doo dah" vocals that sneak up on you...the whole thing just knocks me out.
Seriously -- I figure if you make just one record as good as this one over the course of your lifetime, you pretty much deserve immortality. On the other hand, the the guy gets to go home at night to Aimee Mann, so the hell with him.
No Myth wasn't that bad. So there's sort of 2 songs in his lifetime, and snoozy Aimee Mann.
ReplyDeleteOh Yeah - that is =great= - thanks Steve! 'No Myth' was a favorite back in, what, late 80's, early 90's - but I had not heard any more from Mr. Penn since then.
ReplyDeleteAny further comments on this (or other albums) by Michael Penn? e.g, where to start if I suddenly had $9.99 burning a hole in my pocket?
More Aimee Mann please!
ReplyDeleteI thought he was a folkie. My bad, this is great.
ReplyDeleteYou found it! Hurrah! There's something to be said for the other version, though ...
ReplyDeleteNever heard this before --
ReplyDeletethat's really nice stuff.
First for me too. Nice. I also liked his songs on "March" but for the fake drums.
ReplyDeleteI could never figure out if the title mean "resigned" or "re-signed" as in signed to a new label. Never got the Prisoner reference Duh.
ReplyDeleteNice. I am sure there are 15 reasons why Michael Penn's career has never been as big as it should have been. Which sucks. But at least we have his music - which is pretty great.
ReplyDeleteI love the Xmas record he and Aimee did - very Beatles-esque and probably one of the few that makes me think of shooting up for the holidays...
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of "Prisoner"-related songs, let's not forget Bob Seger's "Feel Like a Number" ("dammit, I'm a man!")...
ReplyDeleteBest Prisoner-related song ever:
ReplyDelete"I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape" by The Times
KC - actually, it's both, as this was his first album on a new label after being dropped by RCA.
ReplyDeleteHe's done a lot of good stuff, but he has sort of the same problem his wife does: individual songs sound great, yet the albums get kind of boring. They need a little more variation in tempo, instrumentation, production, or something (particularly tempo).
Being a long-time fan of Penn since his weird appearance on SNL under some band name I can't remember ... each album takes an eternity, but this one was his greatest. I listened to this one so continuously for a year that I found it really leaped through a multitude of influences ... Neil Young, John Lennon, with some Urge Overkill mixed with the usual trademark Penn pop production punctuation.
ReplyDeleteOK - I just love this record.