When you're three albums into a joke that wasn't too hot to begin with, you need to explode your bit to WK-like extremes. It's the only way to make the dead horse speak-- jab its flank with a Linda Perry hypo and first-team production values. Neptunes, The Matrix, whoever. The decision to go Big Empty probably won't score you any Shortlist Prize nominations, and Jay-Z might never toast you in the VIP, but your ridiculous gasbag of an album will make a few Coconuts endcap trollers happy, and will maybe even rock the exurbs for a few more blips of summer. Sure, you'll just be another link in the wallet chain, but at least you'll be platinum. And MTV2 will shake your hand at the Billboard Music Awards, offering you a folded-up sawbuck and a job as a presenter. Who's laughing now, right?
Taking that route to the rotting top of Mt. Smart Aleck would be laughable, yet acceptable, for a guy like Har Mar Superstar. It's a living and all that. But this portly Minnesota vice hasn't made any of those kinds of career-boosting concessions. Rather, he's kept his sound... well, pretty much exactly the same. Once again, The Handler mostly offers service industry beats and the Minneapolis kid's same old jag of groupies' panties stories. But there is at least one new wrinkle: Har Mar occasionally steps up the proto-electronic prattle of his past from its unsultry soul-jam roots to Chingy-style pop-rap.
Opener "Transit" travels without moving to a geeky Stevie Wonder falsetto while banal disco bumps at midtempo in the background, finally culminating with you-know-who leading a girls-on-boy call-and-response of which he is naturally the center of attention: "Har Mar is so sexy! Har Mar is so sexy!" Right, we heard that before, and it still isn't true.
Not that The Handler doesn't have its notable moments: If you wanna hear Karen O pretending to pork a fat fuck, she and Har Mar huff and puff over a splooging 80s pop retrofit called "Cut Me Up"; "DUI" ("Dialing Under the Influence", natch) is a harmless enough distraction for white college kids to hook up to; and sooner or later, Har Mar gets around to teabagging Holly Valance: The Aussie hottie appropriately tarts the Missy Elliott reset "Back That Camel Up".
But the record is still mostly filler-- a hook for the gaudy live show-- proving again that there wasn't much to the Har Mar joke to begin with. Do you miss the maudlin keyboard pacing and foofy harmonica sound of 1985 soft-rock, best typified by "That's What Friends Are For"? Then by all means, invest some time in The Handler's "Sugar Pie". Perhaps you want swishy raps about Freaky Freezies and public nudity, pinned halfheartedly to Taco's take on Irving Berlin's "Putting on the Ritz"? "As" has an endless supply of tan lines, popsicles, sun block, and flip-flops. But then, even Taco himself got that kind of action at the peak of his fleeting fame skid.
If Har Mar Superstar had taken his catchphrasing and ponce-preening to I Get Wet levels, The Handler might at least flaunt some radio-compressed hooks, Pink and DMX guest shots, and more songs like "DUI" that hug the line between Beck and dreck. But these productions are skeletal at best, mainstream kitsch-pop on a Casio budget. As such, The Handler only meagerly amplifies what he was already doing, probably pleasing his no doubt respectable cadre of core followers, but handily turning off the rest of humanity. Seriously, dude, put your pants back on.
