For eight years Har Mar Superstar has wanted to have sex with you. Dark Touches is the fourth of his advances. The follow up to 2005’s excellent The Handler, this is similarly sex drenched sleaze record. While Har Mar’s style may be too tongue in cheek for some, as ever beneath the OTT lyrics lie some seriously fun and funky tunes.

Musically he’s still treading the Stevie Wonder-with-a-boombox path and it’s a formula that’s yet to fail. Excellent white man modern funk and soul and party tunes are still his talent, along with unashamed lyrical letching.

Despite his one track mind he should, however, be recognised for side-stepping the genuinely creepy white knuckled, po-faced sex and seduction lyrics of the 50 Cents and R&B sex pests of the world. Instead he comes across as more of a harmless Austin Powers-type character scripted by a Carry On staff writer and is all the better for it.

The finely titled ‘Gangsters Want to Cuddle Me’ provides the halfway point to the album and is a smooth jam that’s as funny as it as funky.

Unlike its near flawless predecessor, there are a couple of duds on this record. The flat 80s pastiche Game Night in particular sounds like he’s capable of occasionally letting his mojo slip. When he occasionally veers toward modern R&B too it’s a little too faithful to the tiresome bore-mongers for its own good. The bad to good ratio is very much still on the right side though and the Jackson Five styled “Dope, Man” is one of the sunniest songs you’ll hear all year.

There’s (night) life in the old dog yet.

-Tom Cassidy

www.harmarsuperstar.com
Dilettante Recordings

Tags: har mar superstar, sex, sleaze
Posted in Reviews