Edgy comedians like to say they’re testing the waters. Alex Cameron wants you to come on in ’cause the water is fine. On his 2014 debut, Jumping the Shark, the Australian rocker masqueraded as an aging, washed-up musician. His 2017 album Forced Witness was a delightful and at times outright offensive journey to the center of the male psyche, full of sleazy, self-congratulatory exploits delivered with one eyebrow arched. Now settled in a long-term relationship with Girls actress Jemima Kirke, Cameron describes his third album, Miami Memory, as a more sincere statement. For the first time in his life, he says, he feels capable of writing a genuine love song.
As with most things Alex Cameron, it’s best to take “sincere” with a grain of salt. Several of these songs appear scripted for a dirtbag divorcé; others, like “Gaslight”—“Hear me out, I’m a nice guy”—are clearly tongue in cheek. The most memorable line on the record, “Eating your ass like an oyster,” is more outrageous than romantic. And musically, Miami Memory feels like a stuffy reheat of Forced Witness’ groovy ’80s synth-rock. With the assistance of saxophonist Roy Molloy, that album managed to sound sophisticated no matter how self-evidently terrible its characters. Here, blocky synth structures feel mismatched to the themes, and heavy-handed arrangements sometimes threaten to overwhelm the lyrics.
Cameron’s greatest skill is cinematic evocations of pouty, insecure men in stubborn denial of their failings, like Bruce Springsteen trying to get inside the head of Brett Kavanaugh. “I got friends in Kansas City with a motherfuckin’ futon couch/If that’s how you want to play it,” he scoffs on “Divorce,” the voice of a man too mad to recognize that he’s playing himself. Miraculously, the schtick also works outside the sarcastic register. He’s maybe most affecting on “End Is Nigh,” an almost countrypolitan synth ballad about an alcoholic fatalist who’s having a bad time at 12-step meetings: “They remind me of my daddy with that Bible shit/And drinking coffee makes me wanna die more.” You don’t necessarily need firsthand experience with this kind of personal dysfunction; Cameron makes it both painfully real and bleakly comical.
When Miami Memory attempts to reach outside the discomfort zone, it’s less convincing. “Far From Born Again” is feel-good disco-funk about a woman who reminds me of Candy, Maggie Gyllenhaal's scrappy, self-made pornographer on HBO’s The Deuce. But while “Far from born again/She’s doing porn again” is excellent as a one-liner, Cameron never reaches in to explore that tension, the way Candy’s relationship with her puritanical mother complicates her success in sex work. Cameron’s narrator is close enough to the action to criticize hypocritical customers—“Same men that tell her stop are the same suckers that pay”—but distant enough that he comes off as a voyeur.
The best Alex Cameron songs lift—or rather sink—you into worlds created by deeply flawed characters: On Forced Witness’ “Running Outta Luck,” his misguided antihero fell for a stripper and, blinded by love and jealousy, took off on the run from her other clients. On Miami Memory’s “Bad for the Boys,” he’s singing about the trick rather than doing it: “Good old Dane, what a shame/He got done for a sexual harassment claim … Never thought I’d feel bad for the boys.” You hate to say it, but this could be a far funnier song if oblivious, predatory “Dane” wrote it, and Cameron has the rare ability to illustrate the creeper perspective while simultaneously undermining it. Instead, his last lines—“Guess I don’t feel so bad, feel so bad, feel so bad for the boys”—seem like they were supposed to be the subtext.
Perhaps Cameron boxed himself in here: He’s the loudest character in his own music, but he’s also established that it would be out of character for that music to be anywhere near as self-reflective as he is in life. As in the case of Stephen Colbert, it’s hard to drop a winning irony act and remain equally entertaining. It’s easy enough to see why Cameron would like to have it both ways—it’s a lot harder to pull off.
Buy: Rough Trade
