A dramatic modern-day tale of alienation and its tragic consequences, skilfully and humourously told by an expert storyteller.
This record is a humorous, disconcerting yet ultimately riveting soap opera. Its episodic nature makes you want to hurry to the next track, albeit with your eyes firmly closed. The main protagonist of this drama is grotesque and sad, yet perhaps all too familiar. Will Schwartz, aka The Male Pattern, is a gifted crafter of intense drama. He uses humour to expertly oil the dramatic gears and to anaesthetise us as we embark on this harrowing journey. We are gripped, and we need to know the outcome even though, deep down, we can intuit what’s to come. Schwartz is the first-person narrator, lending his voice to the protagonist and the theatrical nature of the piece is confirmed by the PR, which states that “all parts are played by Will Schwartz”. This is as far from coffee shop ambient chill as Psycho is from Paddington, and it’s certainly not an album to background a relaxed, comforting cappuccino and croissant tête-à-tête. So buckle up and prepare to be entranced, entertained, enraptured, and maybe a little horrified.
I Was Shot In The Heart is the debut album from The Male Pattern, a project of Will Schwartz. He has been recording and releasing music since the early 2010’s. He is also a novelist and English professor from Queens, NY, and he first started making music as a co-writer in the band Uncles along with Daniel Bateman, who also appears on this record. This is his first musical project in 10 years, and it offers an insightful glimpse into a world of alienation and the sad and desperate consequences that can result.
There are nine tracks on the album. The protagonist narrates his own tragic downfall, providing an insight into his motivations and his delusions. Two of the tracks are spoken messages external to the main character, one from a restaurant manager and the other from the police, and they offer a playfully comic commentary on the unfolding events. Schwartz sums the album up as follows: “I Was Shot in the Heart! tells the story of an unnamed suburban dad as he navigates his acrimonious divorce, spends too much time watching TV and on the computer, gets addicted to pills, loses his job as a mortgage broker, shoots and kills a small-time drug dealer, finds God, and commits suicide by cop at a 24/7 Stop and Shop in White Plains, NY”. Schwartz artfully combines the inherent desperation with the banality of such a modern-day tragedy.
The tracks take us from scene to scene. The protagonist starts off in The Television Watcher, absorbing the images on TV, his reality and that of his TV heroes horribly conflated. He lives in a fantasy world, creating a role and purpose with no basis in real life. I’m A Soldier sees him justifying his fight for recognition and a place in the world, and in his mind his struggle gives him an equivalence with being a real veteran and a soldier. He imagines himself into a role as a restaurant security guard, yet the reality of how he is perceived receives a firm grounding in the amusing ‘corporate speak’ track, Voicemail To Corporate. By this point, the listener is truly hooked and needs to know what this guy will do next, all the time sensing that it’s unlikely to be anything good. In There Are Angels, he thinks about how he’ll be remembered, imagining misty-eyed stories being told at his wake. As Schwartz explains, “the desire to be seen and witnessed so that our lives become transformed into something meaningful, a scene or story seen through someone else’s eyes” underpins his musings. Mr Good Time sees him imagining himself as a super ‘too cool for school’ office dude, misunderstood, undervalued, and not able to accept that his failure was more likely a result of his laziness, ineptitude, and on-the-job substance abuse. An exaggerated David Brent-like character comes to mind, sad, embarrassing and hugely delusional.
The tracks roll by, and with foreboding, the denouement comes closer. His ineptitude and disconnection are further revealed in Charlie (The Robbery) when he attempts to rob a small-time drug dealer, accidentally blowing him away. The mundanity is expertly conveyed in All Points Bulletin (Police Scanner) as the cop’s attention is drawn to the protagonist’s bumper sticker, which says “I get 5 bars with T-Mobile”, irrelevant to the plot yet maybe the most notable thing about this invisible man. Now on the run, in his conversation with a priest in Father, I Fucked Up, he rationalises that really, maybe it’s God’s fault after all; he’s supposed to be all-knowing, all-seeing. The end comes as the police catch up with him in the title track, I Was Shot In The Heart. “I got Shot in the heart; it was the best thing I ever done” sort of says it all. He’s finally been noticed, and no doubt his principal life ‘achievement’ will be two minutes of infamy on the local news.
The narrative power of this album is outstanding. The music is beautifully constrained and supports this tragic, bitter social comedy. It is easy to envision this album being portrayed on the stage, a story of alienation and desperation in the modern world. Schwartz focuses on the individual and on the impact of alienation both on himself and on how it affects those around him. It gets inside the protagonist’s head and offers some insight into what drives such characters to do what they do. The characters’ ill-conceived antisocial behaviour cannot command our sympathy, yet it must make us think about what drives people to these situations. That he suffers from his own version of “shit life syndrome” is probably beyond doubt, but why and what can be done about it.
This album is gripping, thought-provoking, and to Schwartz’s credit it skilfully uses humour to pose a number of questions. The expert storytelling reminds one of Patterson Hood and Will Sheff, among others, as it shines a light on a social issue that does not appear to be going away anytime soon. So if you’re feeling brave, go into your local coffee shop and ask them to play this record. Don’t expect anyone to talk to you, however.
