Har Mar Superstar
The Handler
Release Date: Sep 14, 2004
Genre(s): Indie, Rock, Pop
Record label: Record Collection
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Album Review: The Handler by Har Mar Superstar
Acceptable, Based on 2 Critics
Based on rating 3/5
The stout little Minnesotan who calls himself Har Mar Superstar is proof that no man is too short or too hairy to be a bodice-ripping soul goat - even if that status exists mostly in his own mind. Working on the assumption that if he doesn't big himself up, nobody else will, Har spends an inordinate chunk of his third album proclaiming his foxiness, abetted by a female platoon who wail, "Har Mar gets all the ladies/I want him to touch me/Cos I wanna have his babies." And that's just the first song, Transit. Between that one and the finale, an electro-pop cover of Gilbert O'Sullivan's Alone Again (Naturally), he trundles out every imaginable R&B conceit.
Based on rating 5/10
It's more than a little surprising that Sean Tillman has been able to make a three-album career out of Har Mar Superstar. While his randy send-up of urban music doesn't quite reach code-red, Weird Al levels of jokiness, Tillman's music and shtick (wow, a chubby white guy singing about sex!) always come closer to novelty music than sultry R&B. Not that it needs to be genuine -- at his best, Har Mar Superstar is sincerely fake.
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