Mr. Hollywood, Jr.

A brilliant album filled with baroque pop classics, and the genius level songwriter who left indie rock for Hollywood.

By the time Michael Penn released his brilliant long-player, Mr. Hollywood, Jr. 1947, the concept of the album was already beginning to atrophy. Nascent digital delivery systems and rampant file sharing were breaking apart not only the music industry, but also the way music was consumed. Listeners were no longer required to buy a a full record, or make any purchase - even a single - to get access to the tracks they loved.

Albums had officially been eschewed by a new generation, and the necessity of delivering an album of songs though a physical format like vinyl or CD became less and less necessary. Today, the full album as physical product is most common in the form of expensive vinyl pressings that serve much more as a luxury item than a necessity for getting a particular record in your ears.

Nonetheless, as the curve bent ever more toward the arc of single songs and short attention spans, Michael Penn delivered a genius pop record filled with remarkable songs built around interwoven stories in post-World War Two Los Angeles. It is also the last album released by a tremendously gifted songwriter and singer.

The noir laden narratives within Mr. Hollywood, Jr. 1947 echo an old L.A. that exists as a gauzy dreamworld quilted from fragments of Raymond Chandler, forties Hollywood, shadow laden hotel rooms and nightclubs laid out as backdrops for poor decisions and dire consequences.

There are echoes of what soldiers of the era called ‘Shellshock’, a colloquial term for what we know now as PTSD. Cases piled high in the opening track, Walter Reed belie the machinations of a massive post-war medical machine that the government needed to treat the men returning for even years after the conflicts had ended. The opening line of the track’s second verse could be a thesis statement for the unprepared characters inside Mr. Hollywood, Jr. 1947, “All I wanna do is hide, it’s graduation day.”

That opening song sets the stage for a flurry of tales built around a booming America stretching to its western shores in search of glitter, money, and romance. Yet, the lives encompassed within the annals of Penn’s tableau have come up short on the American dream for one reason or another. They plod out self-medicated lives spiked with minor excitements and major disappointments.

Penn’s lyrical style is delicately observed. With flourishes, he can create a mood, or a provide acres of context in a single phrase. The songs are built like simplified Raymond Carver stories. And while they are seemingly interconnected by narrative in spots, all of these songs stand as vibrant portraits on their own merits.

Sonically too, the record is sprawling and adventurous without ever exceeding its limits. Penn pulls musical inspiration from 60s folk, classic and the chamber pop of the psychedelic era, perhaps most notably pulling from bands like The Left Banke. The collision of eras through Penn’s ears provides a timeless feel to the record. It is an album from the early aughts, retelling a fictional post-war LA largely through the lens of baroque pop of a different era melded with Penn’s established musical style. The result is a stunning collage of broken noir stories played out to an intricate and melodious sonic landscape.

In the almost two decades since the release of Mr. Hollywood, Jr. 1947, Michael Penn has moved on to an active career in composing for TV and film. As far as swan songs go, Penn’s final album is a helluva way to leave the game. Yet, I am much more drawn to the sonic films captured on on Mr. Hollywood than I am by most of what is emanating from Hollywood these days, including the work that Penn is scoring.

In 1989, Penn soared to the US Top 20 with his surprise hit No Myth, the debut single from his first album. The song reached #13 on the Hot 100 and turned Penn into something of a college rock darling for a brief time. His subsequent records failed to capture that audience a second time, but critics and songwriters were smitten with his lyrical prowess and hummable melodies.

In his roughly fifteen years of making pop records, Penn has crafted some of the most literate and singable songs in the annals of rock music. The crossfade between Penn’s pastiche style of cinematic songwriting and his composing work reinforce the filmic nature of the songs. It’s no surprise that Penn first scratched his scoring itch by working with director Paul Thomas Anderson on a pair of his early films, Hard Eight and Boogie Nights.

On this record in particular, there is enormous narrative similarity between the characters lurking here and those within Anderson’s epic film, The Master. In that version of Anderson’s postwar America, our own dreams and desires become our downfalls. It is manifest destiny as a curse.

Mr. Hollywood, Jr. 1947 plays like one of the great unmade films of the new century, a collection of interconnected narratives laid out like a lush Robert Altman or P.T. Anderson film contained solely in a sonic landscape. Penn has made a masterpiece about America, aspiration, broken dreams, and the shadowy places of our own pasts. Even if it’s the last record we get from Michael Penn, we are so very lucky to have it.

Cheers,
Matty C