Har Mar Superstar - Dark Touches

You may be aware that the position of principal white-skinned disco-funkster has recently been vacated by MJ’s passing, leaving the field wide open for someone else to step in and benefit from the world’s reawakened love affair with the man/myth’s musical style. Since Justin Timberlake’s still rather quiet, the task falls to Prince’s pauper Har Mar Superstar. Live, Sean Tillman is an engaging presence, his sexy antics and natural charisma disguising his second-hand material. But Dark Touches lays his limitations bare: lyrics, though deliberately tongue-in-cheek, are clichéd and awful irregardless, and there’s a ridiculous amount of Jacko-cribbing in tracks like the admittedly ace Dope Man and Turn It Around’s echoes of Billie Jean. The album’s chief flaw, however, is exemplified by Game Night, which resembles a rejected Lonely Island skit - too trivial to be taken seriously, too straight-laced to amuse, Dark Touches largely operates in an unconvincing middle-ground.