Lawrence, one of my cafe rat buddies, just asked me if I had read American Psycho. (Answer: no.) He had just finished it and said he was puzzled. According to him, American Psycho‘s chief character is obviously gay and the business about his being a heterosexual serial killer is actually the fellow’s coded confession for being an irresponsible jerk who has spread AIDS to unsuspecting partners. Lawrence says that, page by page, the book makes little sense if you don’t read it that way. But he has turned up no one who agrees with his theory. Wikipedia, the movie version, googling “American psycho” and “AIDS” — all blank.

I was just reading the collected X-Men and Power Pack series to my son. Having finished it, I do have a request for writers of kids comics:

Could you please leave out the morals?

Each issue of this has a tidy little message of wisdom for the kiddies…Don’t be mean to your sister! Science is fun! Face down your fears! Believe in yourself! It’s condescending and boring and pointless.

You know what kids learn from super-hero comics? They learn that it would be neat having powers and that stuff blowing up is cool. And they can learn to read, too. And you know what? That’s enough. Just leave it there. The other stuff is condescending and tiresome; kids are either going to ignore it, or….no, there is no or. They’re just going to ignore it. And for parents (or at least this parent) it’s annoying.

So forget the exhortations, would you?. Just tell a story, please.

Real boring soul, that is. In the last 20 years, R&B has been one of the most omnivorous genres around, eagerly consuming —in some cases wholesale — pop, rap, rock, Bollywood, and a long list of etceteras. In the meantime, neo-soul purists have been the elderly relatives with bad digestion, muttering darkly about moral decay and gas pains. Indeed, as R&B has methodically conquered the world, neo-soul fans have longed wistfully for a purer past, when rhythm was rhythm, blues was blues, and musical crossbreeding had not yet whelped its foul and mongrel breed. Never mind that Ray Charles opportunistically appropriated country, or that Prince loved the Beatles, or that R&B acts from the Coasters on up have been all about relentlessly gimmicky pop music. Since when has logic gotten in the way of righteous breast-beating about kids-these-days?

Sunshine Anderson’s sophomore album, “Sunshine at Midnight,” is as good an example of neo-soul’s wrong-headed crotchetiness as any. Sure, it’s listenable enough,. The lyrics are routinely sassy and strong-minded — without ever latching onto a quirky metaphor or inspired detail. The beats, melodies, and production are all professional — without ever turning into memorable songs. Her singing is strong — without being distinctive. There are one or two exciting moment (like the weird pseudo-classical chorus at the beginning of “Trust”), but they’re abandoned quickly, as if Anderson’s worried that the fogies might catch her having fun. This is soul music as cultural museum piece: tasteful, reverent, and ossified. If Wynton Marsalis did a musical interpretation of “Waiting to Exhale,” or Brian Setzer did an Aretha tribute album, this is what it would sound like (well, okay, maybe not *that* bad, but you get the idea.) It’s all yet more evidence that cred can be a millstone, which is why pre-fab, plastic pop R&B clothes-horses like Ashanti, Cassie and Danity Kane consistently make more innovative music than Mary J. Blige or Macy Gray — and, yes, more soulful music,too.
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This review first ran in Bitch Magazine a while back.