Zac Pennington, the lead singer and songwriter of the Portland-based indie-pop group Parenthetical Girls, has cast himself in juicy, familiar role: He's playing the part of the amoral, slippery schoolboy, charming and precociously world-weary, fated to be caught in bed in a scandalous tryst with the headmistress or -master. It’s a character he sketches out in pithy shorthand on "Sympathy For Spastics": "Blue-blood, well-hung, and just a touch too young." Airy, arch, and literate, Pennington's persona is derived in part from Kevin Barnes' sex- positive-doctoral-candidate swagger and half from Morrissey's shuddering mortification at sex’s ickier, more embarrassing transactions. In the video for "The Pornographer", a track from Privilege, the Girls’ fourth album and first full-length since 2008, the camera trains on Pennington's high cheek bones and fragile frame: he's staring into the camera, lip-syncing, while someone off-camera performs oral sex on him. Watching his face, we see everything without seeing anything; it is the most NSFW safe-for-work video I've ever seen.
Like a lot of Privilege itself, the video is both smartly executed and a little distractingly impressed with itself. Privilege is an assured, musically accomplished work, but all the aesthetic homework Pennington’s done to refine his persona is still visible, pointing directly back to the influences and forebears he’s inspired by. When he quotes The Smiths' "What Difference Does It Make" ("But I'm still fond of you") on "The Pornographer", it doesn’t feel like sly appropriation, as I'm sure he intended it; it feels, in the context of a song that already has a heavy Smiths air hanging over it, like he maybe forgot to rewrite the line for himself.
This slight over-eagerness is most evident in his lyrics. For every line that insightfully captures a moment of human frailty ("I know you think we failed at life/ But smile with your eyes like you're satisfied, and try to act polite," he instructs on "A Note To Self"), there are a dozen overwrought couplets that strain for sophistication and flail awkwardly: "She's thick as shit, and pregnant with the myth of a noble proletariat," he sings on "Sympathy for Spastics", a line so misguided it feels like a pre-written McSweeney's parody. He moans "I've never done one pure thing in my life/ Oh never mind, just guide these hollow hips of mine inside those equine thighs," on "Weaknesses", and on "For All the Final Girls", he purrs "Could be cousin touched us too much?" Beneath these lines, you can almost hear Pennington's eyebrows arching hopefully: "Oh, have I shocked you? No? Hmm. Ok, how about now?"
Thankfully, he has a sure-footed gift for melody, one that is boosted by composer and songwriter Jherek Bischoff's rich, detailed arrangements. In the background of "Weaknesses", a wandering keyboard line with a faint samba flavor offers counterpoint to Pennington's vocals. On "For All the Final Girls", a fidgety groove coalesces from unlikely elements-- the dinner-club plucking of violins, scrubbing cellos, and trilling piano. Pennington's melody for "Evelyn McHale" is so graceful and balanced that the words become mere roller-coaster cars to deliver its precision-tooled joy. Pennington and Bischoff have simpatico sensibilities, and could probably one day collaborate one day on a killer modern musical. Pennington might not have the depth to sell the part he's auditioning for just yet, but give him time: maybe he just hasn’t earned it yet, baby.
