Michael Penn waited only three years to put out his fourth album, 2000’s MP4 (Days Since a Lost Time Accident). And I hate to be redundant, but it’s another winner along the same lines of the three winners before it.
If there’s a criticism to be made of Penn, I suppose it would be that he doesn’t cover much new ground. He’s been crafting the same brand of smart pop music for 20 years now. But when the results are this good, I find it hard to paint that as a negative.
By the time of MP4‘s release, Penn was basically resigned (see the title of his previous album) to the sort of semi-famous anonymity that plagues a lot of talented artists. He’s probably known better as Sean Penn’s brother (and maybe even Aimee Mann’s husband) than for his own work.
But don’t get me wrong… I know I should hold off on throwing this pity party. Michael Penn certainly makes a much better living than I do, and he doesn’t have to roll out of bed every morning and drive to an office. He has a small but very dedicated fan base who make it clear how much his music means to them. And there are probably scores of artists as good or better than him who are playing in train stations and subway tunnels right now who would kill to have his career.
‘Bucket Brigade’ is an odd little song, the final track on the album. I like the mix of piano and banjo. It seems to be about a guy starting a fire over a girl. Or something.
It’s a bucket brigade
Who got it off the wire
That you’d set it and left
Just to cover the theft
That would topple an empire
But you wanted the world
It was only the heart…
Only the heart of a girl
For everyone in the know
He’s going to put on a show
Death-defying feats of daring
And for the riff and the raff
He’s gonna mimeograph
A statement he’s preparing
That he wanted the world
It was only a heart…
Only the heart of a girl
Here we are
Handing over all we know
Either that or
Start to blow ’til we’ve
Run out of breath
It’s a kind of parade
It’s a bucket brigade
Who read it off the wire
That you lost your whole world
And it was all over
The heart of a girl
Only the heart of a girl
Here we are
Handing over all we know
Either that or
Start to blow ’til we’ve
Run out of breath
Meet Me In Montauk 
This is the first entry – and the first song – that’s made me feel as though we ought to start giving this blog space to some of those guys singing their hearts out in the subway. I loved your YouTube feature a few months back. Could you do another one of those?
This song is not grabbing me on first listen, but it may be that I’m just not feeling it for the late, great Chris Penn’s brother 😉 (Madonna’s ex-brother-in-law?, Hopper’s uncle?, this is fun…)
By the way, about midway through your second paragraph rationale, I started wondering when you would devote a week to the Indigo Girls. Same argument could be made about them. Now I readily admit that I don’t have their most recent albums, but the whole argument has me convinced that I don’t need to run out and get them any more than I need to run out and get this one. But I will put March into the rotation soon enough. Has Penn put out a “best of…”? That might be the most efficient way to get a handful of songs from each of his subsequent albums. Same with Indigo Girls or any other artist that suffers from sameness.
Well, in the case of the Indigo Girls, I think it’s not so much that they’ve been putting out the same kind of songs, but rather the same song! 🙂
(Just kidding… I haven’t even heard about 85% of their music at this point)
I really like this song too. Hate to sound redundant (like the Indigo Girls:)), but I’ve got to go listen to some more recent Penn.
Maybe no-one will read my comment so long after this was posted, but anyway, here it goes:
I don’t know if you’ll agree on this, but I always pegged this song as being about the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and the way these types of “problems” are handled by top politicians, i.e. starting a war(which Clinton did not) or trying to create other headlines for media to focus on instead of the inconvenient scandal.
Read the lyrics, especially the second verse and you’ll see what I mean:
For everyone in the know
He’s going to put on a show
Death-defying feats of daring
And for the riff and the raff
He’s gonna mimeograph
A statement he’s preparing
That he wanted the world
It was only a heart…
Only the heart of a girl