Seth Bogart – “Hollywood Squares”

Seth Bogart’s dropped the Hunx and embraced his true name, though no one ever accused Bogart of ever pretending to be anyone other than himself. The album’s a barrage of pop-laced over consumption, art piece poses and general outsized weirdness in dayglow colors that seems like an extension of what Hunx’ tenure stood for and what Bogart’s visual art has evolved into. Its a bit like Pee Wee’s Playhouse (the collective consciousness of the whole house) wrote an album about the underbelly of sex and obsession. But there’s a part of me that knows that for all the big, weird fun, I’ve always loved Hunx for his campy take on the power pop formula and that’s exactly what the opener on his eponymous LP embraces. “Hollywood Squares” is like a bigger, shinier version of what Hunx had been pushing for on Gay Singles, its scrubbed up in sound but still riding that dreamy-eyed heat wave to your heart. The rest of the album’s the artpiece, but this is the mindrocker right here and mostly, I just want to turn it up and let it buzz.