You Can Feel Me

You’ve probably gathered that the name is somewhat fanciful, but the truth is it doesn’t go far enough. Middle-aged, balding, sweaty, doughily overweight, pale as a dead cod, with a pencil ‘tache suggestively riding his upper lip and (gold lamé) outfits that make themselves scarce faster than you can say Party Boy: as anyone who witnessed his Born Sloppy performance will confirm, St. Paul, Minnesota’s Har Mar Superstar does not possess mere superstar quality so much as the eye-poppingly riveting carnie-porn compulsiveness of the truly repellent.

Live, his modus famously involves stripping to his Y-fronts or if you’re particularly lucky, a thong (less a striptease, more a kind of Nude Man Threat). Musically, Sean Tillman (‘Har Mar’ comes from Harold Martin Tillman, his fictional younger brother’s name. Don’t ask) has been hailed, mostly by himself, as the new saviour of smoove sex-o-centric R’n’B. Surprisingly however, this is about right: and fall-off-your-chair-shockingly, it’s great.
His largely unadorned, drums-bass-and-Casio 1980s-synth’n’b sound was probably unintentional, a product of simply not knowing how to programme much else, but it works. His guest rapper mates are stupidly ace. And with his sub-Stevie Wonder trilling, no-lyric-too-nasty rapping and endearingly crap use of urban slang, he really is brilliant, in a kind of Sir Mix-A-Lot, Princess Superstar-as-an-accountant, Dirk Diggler kind of way: an R.Kelly-style Lady Magnet reimagined in the white-boy nerd laboratory of his parents’ basement.

Isaac Hayes would be proud. Possibly.