Upon leaving electronic outfit Seekae to embark on a solo career, Australian musician Alex Cameron started committing to his stage character by applying latex wrinkles, scars, and pockmarks to his face before each public performance or appearance. These can be seen pretty clearly on the album cover of his debut solo album Jumping the Shark. Though the record is seeing official release this month, the photo was taken back in 2014, when the album was originally given away for free on Cameron’s charming “Remember Geocities, guys ;-))) ???” website. Cameron’s goal was to look the part of the sketchy, down-and-out lounge singer he played in his songs.
However, now that Cameron is on the road, he’s announced that he’s no longer wearing the wrinkles. The decision is a good one: By removing the mask, he renders the character of Alex Cameron even stranger, as there’s now one less layer between the audience and the man giving ridiculous interviews like this, making it feel less of an act and more of an open question: Is this who this guy really is?
Wrinkles or not, what might actually make people care about Alex Cameron is the fact that he’s a great storyteller, one who uses simple song forms to couch vivid messages. Seven of Jumping the Shark’s brief eight tracks are in the first person, and each one depicts a cast of losers and creeps whose unifying thread is “the sort of desperate nature of trying to avoid failure.” Though his characters are caricatures of the downtrodden—e.g., “the drunkest, ugliest girl at the bar;” broken men who’ve moved back in with their parents—Cameron has crafted these characters so convincingly it’s easy to imagine he’s being honest when he says he drew some from his own life.
Cameron’s sketches wouldn’t hit home quite as deeply without his effortless compositions, which perfectly complement his scuzzy, blue-light tales of woe. Driven by elementary synth programming and Cameron’s confident, warm baritone, the music suggests a Nick Cave-meets-second-album-Suicide aesthetic. But unlike Alan Vega’s airy, effect-masked vocals, which included a lot of reverb, gasps and yawps—making them frequently more atmospheric than not—Cameron places his voice audibly front and center, emphasizing his narrative gift. Both “Happy Ending” and recent single “The Comeback” follow this template to great effect, sharing the miseries of freshly jobless men trying to convince themselves that they know how to move on. The latter in particular, with its sunny melody underneath a story of TV host who won’t let go of the past, feels especially devastating—the juxtaposition of warm sounds and bleak words creates a bizarre sense of false comfort that channels the denial of the narrator perfectly.
A few tracks vary this formula to even greater success. On “Real Bad Lookin’,” Cameron provides a circus-carousel oom-pah accompaniment but breaks the song open with a heavily-treated guitar solo in the mold of Robert Fripp. “Mongrel” the only song without first-person narration, conjures the playfulness of White Williams, embracing the poetic freedom that comes from abandoning the perspective of a sad cretin; the poetic closing line “Death is the pulse in your eye on your very last breath” registers as perhaps the most remarkable lyric on the record.
As could be expected for a Vegas-style showman, Cameron saves an elegiac note for last, wrapping up the record with the austere “Take Care of Business,” which meditates slowly for the song’s first few minutes on a simple repeated keyboard and drum program before an organ synth bursts in with climax as Cameron’s reverb-heavy vocals begin chanting the chorus: “I ain’t half the man I wanted to be/You gotta take care of business.” The accompanying video for this single depicts the still-wrinkled Cameron contorted on stage under a harsh blue light (an idea repeated again on the video for “The Comeback”)—making overt the subconscious David Lynch connection.
At only eight songs and thirty-two minutes, Jumping the Shark makes the most of its quick run time to sell you on the idea that Cameron’s “I’ve been cut so I know how to bleed” tales carry the charm and gravitas of authenticity; the fact that he is making it harder to see the difference between himself and his characters only cements this impression. More importantly, the melding of these stories with Cameron’s efficient, minimal compositions create the type of songs that penetrate deeply and linger in your consciousness long after you’ve stopped listening to them.
