Songs about love, loss, divorce, substance abuse and a life of crime aren’t new or even unusual in rock and roll. The Male Pattern’s Will Schwartz has rolled it all up into one beautifully messy nine-song album that recalls everyone from Paul Westerberg to Bruce Springsteen to Randy Newman to Ween and has all the makings of a classic concept album, brutally honest and often laugh-out-loud hilarious.
Under the moniker the Male Pattern, Schwartz’ album I Was Shot in the Heart! marks his return to music after more than a decade. The Queens-based songwriter, novelist, and English professor began making music in the early 2010s as a co-songwriter and vocalist in Uncles with Daniel Bateman and Tom White of Frog before issuing one solo EP and then shifting his focus to fiction writing (his work has been published in Newtown Literary, Ninth Letter, The Baltimore Review, and The Briar Cliff Review, from which he received the 2017 award for literary fiction).
Schwartz’s work on I Was Shot in the Heart! is undoubtedly the result of someone who has spent a great deal of time as a professional storyteller. While plenty of songwriters can create character-driven stories, he has clearly developed an uncanny ability to spin one hell of an entertaining yarn.
Schwartz describes the album’s concept in a press statement, explaining that it “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 & Shop in White Plains, New York. “Yes, the plot has been given away like an overly enthusiastic movie trailer, but as they say, the journey is half the fun.
With the gentle strum of an acoustic guitar and a twang in his voice, Schwartz sets the scene in the opening track, “The Television Watcher,” painting his unnamed lead character as an aimless TV addict: “The Magnificent Seven is on channel 11 / Steve McQueen double feature / I think they made a remake / They even made a run for Oscar gold / They had no hope for a prestige category, but I think they won a technical.” This kind of inspired rambling runs through the album, and later in the song, he goes off on a long, hilarious tangent about Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Things get ugly quickly in “I’m a Soldier”, as the Male Pattern, in a Neil Young minor-key croon, reveals his character as a divorcee, hip-deep in MAGA ideology and constantly blaming his failures on everyone else as he causes a disturbance in a local restaurant. He calls himself a veteran, even though the battles he fights are hardly actual combat (“Every time I log on it’s like Vietnam,” he grumbles).
In an inspired twist, “Voicemail to Corporate (11/10/2024)” puts “I’m a Soldier” in proper context: a voicemail from a restaurant manager to his boss, asking for guidance on the disturbance chronicled in the previous track. This move brings the concept closer to a theatrical production, adding more voices and dimensions to the story.
While “There are Angels” sees the character wistfully looking back on sunnier times (“There’s a dancefloor in Aruba / That overlooks the water / Where our love burned true”) but acknowledges his real-time downfall and imagines people eulogizing him at his wake. “Mr. Good Time” is described by Schwartz on his Bandcamp page as “an ode to fading off on Xanax at your office job”, a sort of bleak take on a corporate cog surrounded by fake friends and drinking heavily at lunch: “Don’t get him started on Benghazi or the ’94 Knicks,” Schwartz sings, “But he’s good with the gab or the bar tab, if you’re looking for kicks.”
Imagine The Office directed by Abel Ferrara, and you have the general idea. As with the rest of the record, the song wallows in delusion and denial, a man clearly broken but half-heartedly trying to hold it together. The instrumentation is primarily acoustic guitar, but the Male Pattern is aided greatly by appearances from Dakota Holden on pedal steel, Jenna Toller on background vocals, and former bandmate Daniel Bateman on piano.
As the slow-motion character downfall continues, he robs a CVS in “Charlie (The Robbery)”, tearfully confesses to his father (“Father, I Fucked Up”), and is eventually shot by the police, which seems to be what he wanted all along (“I got shot in the heart and the second it hit / I knew that this was it / I looked back on all the dumb shit I ever did and it looked magnificent”).
“The story I’m telling is ugly and weird,” Schwartz explains. “It’s mean-spirited, it makes fun of its characters, it’s violent, and I go for cheap laughs.” It’s true that the Male Pattern’s I Was Shot in the Heart! is hardly a sunny tale with a happy ending, but like a Christopher Guest mockumentary, you’re cringing at the self-destruction but also laughing hysterically at the humorous way it’s all framed. The album is a rugged, multifaceted masterpiece that thankfully pulls no punches.