Herman Dune - Giant (EMI / Capitol)
3/5
By: Dan Monsell
Are there really enough layers of irony for Herman Dune? With his backing girl group the Angels, the Lou Reed re-hash and his Hawaiian lounge rock breakdowns, he may be overstepping some kind of mark here. And what is it with all this simple happy stuff right now? A glimpse of sun and suddenly there's no big bad world with war, poverty or a train journey from London to the west-country that costs more than a flight to Moscow.
However, we like to think we live in a time of minds wide open and varied, so we will of course allow forty year old men such as Herman to warble about loving New York City in the summertime and wanting to see their extra special one soon. But it must be stated, sooner or later, someone is going to legitimately have to deal with some real issues, or we may all just all fall down and never get back up again. Herman Dune is not this man, but until then, it seems we will make do happily with summery tunes full of simple rhymes, gimmicks and major chords on an acoustic guitar.
So to clarify, Herman Dune is a bit of a joke, albeit a pretty clever and post-modern one of course. He's looked back at everything (particularly well placed in his more mature stage of life) and decided that it's just pretty funny to re-kindle Lou Reed's childlike rhyming and acoustic simplicity, 60s girl group vocal hooks and loads of horn section fanfare. The result? A record that went down so many wrong roads that it went full circle and came out fine. The intense irony of this album's musical success practically drips from the corners of the record, as it stares back at me from the rack in the corner of the room.
Perhaps because of the appeal of its so-bad-it's-really-very-good intelligence, you constantly find 'Giant' on the recommended desk at fine independent record stores, while people rave about him as his crooning hits you when you click on their MySpace page. And what about it; through all his silliness, maybe Herman does get listened to an awful lot. It's just plain charming at times. Album opener 'I Wish That I Could See You Soon' boasts the rhyming ease of 'I had a billion things to do/you hit my heart with a harpoon/I wish that I could see you soon....' The Angels then sing 'How long till you see her?', to which he replies 'I'm like, the sooner the better...'
Through all the trumpet break-downs that sound like they were written for Seasme Street; the simple croon that would almost be creepy in an older man, not to mention the congas, we get Dune's attempt to deliver Lou Reed's 'Transformer' for the digital generation. As a record to be released in 2007 this is an impressively different sounding album, and a fine pastiche of the times that have come before us. But apart from being a slightly more ironic post-modern imitation of the past, it doesn't really have much to add to it. Good for when your copy of 'Transformer' gets a little bit scratched in its old age, then.
Stream two tracks from 'Giant' HERE.
Artists in this article: Herman Dune
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