liner notes

by lynn rapoport

Oh sweet nothing

ON THE COVER of My Majesty a young man goofs triumphantly on a bemused-looking horse. Animals never expect to break into rock and roll. The guy, Sean Tillmann of Sean Na Na, might have a dream or two, but he's king of nothing very much. They always come riding in on horseback, the heroes in the storybooks, but Sean doesn't seem ready to save anybody. He's got his own problems – petty hatreds, striking out, saxophones, A-bombs, fantasy girls who might never show.

The horse lord has a bitter heart, but I didn't know it when I started listening to his gripes. I didn't even know they were gripes. The opener, "Double Date" – which, I am sad to report, is still my favorite song on the album – starts out with a hot night, a car ride, and a guy who never had a chance. By the end of the first verse, he's brought the tone down considerably – "I knew I wasn't getting nothing" – but the drums and the hand claps and the sweet little rock guitar line sound like they belong in a dance-athon, like the best parts of the early '60s, like "We Got the Beat." At first all I could think about was the moves I would pull out at the club the next time Sean Na Na rode into town. But the girl shoots him down, and it starts to rain, and he goes home hoping she has the clap. So maybe it's more like "Runaround Sue" for virulent times. And maybe Sean needs a psychiatric consultation more than a Valentine's Day card. The lesson here, at least the one I take away, is that never getting the girl does not always make you a nicer person, whatever the teen movies tell us.

Also sweetly despicable, the last song on the album, "I Need a Girl," is a wistful composite sketch for a future mate, or maybe a fantasy midweek recipe – one part sexy shrink who lets her hair down and "gives it" to him, one part older woman "at her peak" who fucks and smokes and runs, one part family girl who will "mold my commitment issues like silly putty into monogamy," add sugar mommy, married woman, new-wave girl, and live-in nurse to taste. Somewhere in between those two tracks are bop-bop backing vocals to a song about a dying loved one, falsetto musings on the effects of the A-bomb, and a morbid fantasy of partyers feeding on one another for one last high. Good times.

What I like best about My Majesty is how it turns sugar and power pop into a gateway drug, catching at your heartstrings and raising your pulse before your brain catches up to the malevolence of the lyrics. It's a sad addiction – I keep pressing play to hear the choke in the vocals. It's just a sentimental journey into someone else's inferiority complexes and troubles meeting girls, but his voice sounds like silver, like a good storyteller's should. I wouldn't want to meet him on the street, but the quick sketch of heartache is a neat trick for a musician, a good way to make your living.

He might be kidding, but I think he also means it, a stance popular with today's conflicted young songwriters. And music writers. Or maybe he just means it. Either way, he's admitted to wishing a social disease on a bad date who fell short of his desires but gave him what he expected. (And really, how fair is that?) So I feel a little afraid, knowing that somewhere in the Twin Cities a guy has coated his rancorous thoughts in such sugary rock goodness that I will listen to a song three times without realizing I'm participating in what is probably a thought crime. I wonder: has anyone ever wished the clap on me for dodging a good-night kiss?

I'd be happier if I knew how to insult in rhyme. My Majesty fits a type I've always gone for, the songs that make fun of where they come from. Like V.U.'s "Stephanie Says" and Camper Van Beethoven's "Sweethearts" and Belle and Sebastian's "Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying." You can hear their origins like an accent, the saccharine sound of early rock and roll, but they play up the hate behind the love, the insult behind the observation, the fake sunniness that laces the clouds with arsenic and depression. The melody tells you one thing, and the words tell you the melody's a lie.

E-mail Lynn Rapoport at lynn@sfbg.com.