Michael Penn - Mr. Hollywood Jr. 1947 - Record Review

Michael Penn

Mr. Hollywood Jr. 1947

Score: 5.2

Mr. Hollywood Jr. 1947 is a deceptive record, in that the first song “Walter Reed” is powerful and beautiful, but after “Walter Reed’s” three minutes and forty two seconds are up, you could probably turn it off and feel like “wow, Michael Penn is a pretty good musician.” and you could go on living your life in a state of ignorant bliss, and it would be truly sublime, because you will never have listened to the rest of this, this sap.

Mr. Hollywood Jr. 1947 is not only annoying to type out, it is almost impenetrable as well, it moves along as slow as a snail, coated in molasses, sliding across fucking quicksand. I understand that Michael Penn is a great musician, the album is put together very well, the instruments certainly make the proper noises. I also think he says “fuck” in one of his songs. This is an album I would listen to if I wanted to slip into a coma, and while listening to it now, my eyelids grow heavy, my muscles become tired and the tap on the keyboard slows, also a trickle of drool escapes the corner of my mouth, splooshing onto the rich mahogany of my desk, creating a stain that will drive me to madness. ( I don’t like stains.)

Where was I? Ah, yes, this record sucks. While I can appreciate mellow music, this is just fucking boring, so boring and meaningless that I want to swallow a bottle of sleeping pills and put a Ziploc on my head. Oh. Wow, that wasn’t weird. Damn you, Michael Penn!

Reviewing this was a hard process, on the one hand, it sucks hard. but on the other hand, I respect it because it tries to do something genuine, something I haven’t seen in a concept album before, setting the record in 1947 and having it play out all these events from that year, like romance, politics and key inventions (“Television Set Waltz”). I can appreciate an artist who uses a time period as one of the most powerful things in the album (although, I doubt he meant for it to be the best thing about it).

Mr. Hollywood Jr. 1947 has an interesting concept behind it, but is just not easily accessible. It actually takes willpower to sit there and listen to it in it’s gloriously boring entirety.

Mr. Hollywood Jr. 1947