continued from page 24
(“Man is screaming through a mega-
phone/ Get your hands off the Middle
East/ Every word would herd the cynical/
Every word would cut your teeth”), and
the “Won’t Get Fooled Again” echoing,
near-spoken-word “White Privilege”
(“The patriarchy is real/ It’s here in my
song/ I’ll sit and mansplain every detail of
the things it does wrong/ ‘Cause I’m a
white male, full of shame/ My ancestry is
evil/ And their evil is still not gone…their
evil is still not gone.”
Fender says he never wants to come off
jingoistic, heavy-handed, “I won’t ever
confess to being something I’m not,” he
declares. “I know I’m not politically elo-
quent enough to affect any real change in
the world, and I can’t say anything that
hasn’t already been said. So I try my best to
voice how I was feeling growing up where
I did. I mean, I’m not here to start a revolu-
tion — I’m more into what Bob Dylan was
doing, just making a commentary on what
he saw and not trying to start a revolution
in the process.” And yes, he adds, like
Dylan he employs such a cavalcade of
lyrics that he occasionally forgets the
words onstage and has to la-la-la his way
out of the awkward situation.
The rest of the album? Sheer “It’s a
town full of losers, and
we’re pulling out of
here to win” vintage-
Springsteen escapism,
punctuated with Roy
Bittan-delicate piano
notes and — you
guessed it — Clarence
Clemons-howling sax-
ophone breaks that
enter at just the right
time. The phraseology
may be different —
“Leave fast or stay for-
ever” urges the anti-
small-town
ballad
“Leave Fast,” a fairly
stark choice for any
young
lad,
and
“Saturday” and “You’re Not the Only
One” trumpet the pleasurable possibilities
of downing a few hard-earned pints with
your girl on the weekends. “If Saturday
don’t come soon,’ Fender bays, “I’m gonna
loooooose my mind.” The clanging rocker
“Will We Talk?” is reminiscent of The
Killers’ picture-perfect “Run For Cover,”
and describes an average night out at one
of his toughest neighborhood pubs called
The Cut. He sets the scene in the first verse
with a nod to New Order: “Blue Monday
blaring loudly out the speakers/
Fluorescent liquid in his beaker/ Another
night they go too far.”
Like the best Springsteen material, it
feels authentic, lived in, like it actually
happened. Fender’s exuberant equivalent
of that line in The Rising's “Nothing Man,”
wherein a man who lost his wife in the
9/11 tragedy coldly informs well-wishers,
“You want courage?/ I’ll show you
courage you can understand/ Pearl and
silver resting on my night table/ It’s just
me, Lord/ I pray that I’m able.”
Songwriting doesn’t get any more soul-
searing than Bruce at his best. And that’s
the lofty aesthetic level Fender is aiming
for, and he should get there with little trou-
ble. “I just love Springsteen,” he says,
Darkness is my favorite album, followed by
Nebraska. And I love The River, as well,
although I don’t usually like overlong
albums, albums that overstay their wel-
comes. I think mine overstays its welcome
just a touch, so the second one is gonna be
a little bit shorter.”
How did this Brit master his craft so
early? He guffaws. You should have heard
the things he was writing at 14, following
in the footsteps of his brother and mullet-
haired, metal-musician father. “I started
composing really shit songs,” he readily
admits. “I had a song called “Holy Sheep”
about this sheep that was a prophet and
had Jesus-like powers. It was pretty weird.
I was like Tenacious D when I was 15, just
writing silly songs. After that, I started
writing horrendously angsty tunes about
girls, first relationships and heartbreak,
but I stopped doing that because they all
sucked. And I used to sing in this really
contrived bluesy voice because I thought I
needed to.” Once he heard the late Jeff
Buckley, however, he decided to play the
stylistic hand he was dealt. “And I
embraced the fact that I’m a 6’ tall guy with
the voice of a 12-year-old — I had a
squeaky voice, and I was just going to have
to live with it.”
As the legend goes, Fender — while
working in a North Shields pub to save
train fare for acting
auditions in London
— was overheard idly
strumming his guitar
by Ben Howard's
manager,
who
promptly signed him
as a client and then
landed him a deal at
Polydor (Distributed
by
Interscope
Stateside). Next thing
the kid knew, he was
winning the BRIT’s
Critics Choice Award
this year and even
opening for Dylan
himself in London’s
Hyde Park. At first
unsure that it was, indeed, his real last
name, Fender guitars quickly got on board
and began sending him its best instru-
ments, gratis. He hopes to one day have his
own signature model. That, too, should fall
easily into place, given Fender’s meteoric
trajectory.
I’m not sure if this artist even under-
stands the magnitude of his Hypersonic
achievement. Like most of us rock critics,
he just does what he does and hopes it
communicates some spark to others. A lit-
tle flame that can reignite even the rustiest
pilot light. Because here’s the world we
live in now. I went into a huge national
home-entertainment store a week ago,
wanting to buy a few copies of Fender’s
album for early Christmas presents for
some music-hound friends. Easy enough,
right? Wrong. A blank-eyed teenage clerk
with the build of the weasel on Foghorn
Leghorn cartoons just stared at me, blink-
ing. “A WHAT? A CD?”! He asked, incred-
ulously. “Dude — I haven’t bought one of
those in three years! Look around —we
don’t have a new release rack anymore
because we longer sell any CDs!”
The Killer Album of the Year: 2019 edi-
tion. It's out there now, just waiting to
change your life. You'll have to visit one of
Chicagoland's great indie record stores to
get your hands on a copy on vinyl or CD.
46 illinoisentertainer.com november 2019