The Wicked Truth About Loving a Man

The back story indicates that Wolfgang is apparently some sort of robot from the future sent to, indeed, love a man — or something similar, at least. That said, the fetishism on this album is of a different sort, being the kind of thing that is simultaneously an early-'80s proto-synth pop vocoder-voiced confection and a 1950s sci-fi art-designed effort, said art-designed effort as seen through 1980s eyes, the whole released in the 21st century for yet a newer generation...well, one could go on. (Then there are the song titles — "Binary Code" and "Battery" are just two examples.) For all the overarching sense that this could be part of somebody's pitch for a multimedia project somewhere, The Wicked Truth About Loving a Man is a sweet enough tribute to a time and place, and if it's close to a one-note effort, it's a fun little note. If anything, the vocal treatments most recall Neil Young's own exploration into the world of fragile keyboards and electronically distanced singing on Trans, which is not a bad role model in general. The music's pleasant, rough, and simple, and if it's less stick-in-the-memory than much of what was released in the same vein the first time around, it's no bad thing overall.