Cassandra Cronin on September 18th, 2017

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We have our phones set to constantly update us on the existences of everyone and everything. The planet is being destroyed, the sun is dying, nuclear war impending, climate change exponentially quickening, and it’s all on our feed, next to our brunches, our favorite new records, our bathroom mirror selfies, our memes. It’s the information age and every one of us is a “Forced Witness.”

On Saturday night, Australia’s Alex Cameron played selections from his 2013 release (re-released in 2016) “Jumping the Shark” and this year’s insta-classic, “Forced Witness,” to a sold-out Hi Hat in Highland Park.

The music was clearly ’80s-inspired, with an array of bright percussion, swirly humid synth textures, Cameron’s expressive contralto croon and the starlit sax lines from his business partner, Roy Molloy. Just don’t call it nostalgic. Most of the songs’ subject matter deals with the mundane ways we navigate loneliness and depravity in modernity, whether it be streaming adult video, becoming an internet playboy or fucking and fighting with strangers. Whether the lyrics are semi-autobiographical or meant to be a foil to social ills is inconsequential. You could be a beautiful woman or a 4chan troll and still find this music relatable, if you share in the view that the internet is simply a mechanization of consciousness, materializing a history of where it goes, what it considers and what it chooses to remember. Most of us, at the end of our lives, will only remember what we loved and what we regret.

Cameron’s sound was sophisticated with the addition of keyboardist and backing singer Holiday Sidewinder, bassist Justin Nijssen and drummer Henri Lindstrom, all of whom focused their efforts on coloring the hypnotic rhythms with moments of passion and intrigue. The arrangement for “Take Care of Business” blossomed with a great dynamic swell in its final minute, opening up the floor before “Candy May” for Cameron to speak about the single’s inception as an ode to an ex-girlfriend, becoming a breakup track upon playback to the titular muse.

Try to imagine the ego as a little dog that follows you around throughout life. After the trauma of a breakup, the little dog may take the lead and give its weakened owner the illusion that it has matured into a much bigger animal. Such is the narrative that preceded “The Chihuahua” and embodies much of the fragile masculinity that Cameron lampoons in his exaggerated exercises of song and dance during “Real Bad Lookin’,” “The Comeback,” “Runnin’ Out of Luck” and “True Lies.” The band executed the 10-song set with flawless fidelity to the recorded versions, returning for an encore of new album closer “Politics of Love.” At this point, Cameron and Molloy held up a copy of “Forced Witness” and admitted to their rapt audience that they had destroyed their personal lives in the making of the record. At least they look damn good doing it — to quote “The Chihuahua,” heartache is for the ugly.

Setlist: Chinatown, Real Bad Lookin’, The Comeback, Take Care of Business, Candy May, The Chihuahua, True Lies, Stranger’s Kiss, Runnin’ Out of Luck, Marlon Brando. Encore: Politics of Love

Photos by Zane Roessell