It's not often you run into a well-made pop album that takes its mastery as a point of departure for an inquiry into the mind of its creator. On his new full-length Going to the Movies, Nashville keyboardist, singer and songwriter Mark Fredson creates pop that is impeccably formalist and psychologically deep. Going to the Movies references yacht rock, soul, Billy Joel and The Beach Boys.
Friday night, Fredson appeared at Acme Feed & Seed as part of Acme Radio Live's Social Distancing Sessions, following an opening set from indie-rock quartet Keeps. Fredson's set was just a man and his piano: He went solo with the material he wrote for Going to the Movies. Fredson has presence as a performer, and he possesses a subtly subversive genius that might make you rethink any facile comparisons with Joel or Elton John.
Fredson, who moved to town from Washington in 2010 with his band The Lonely H, is a newfangled pop-schlock master. Though they leaned toward country-tinged Americana on later releases, The Lonely H reworked power pop on tracks like 2009's "Out West," which reminds me of Artful Dodger. Fredson doesn't exactly rock on Going to the Movies, but his new music does evoke, say, Joel's normal-guy psychodramas. For example, "Loud and Clear" turns out to be about a woman who keeps giving Fredson advice he may not heed.
At Acme, Fredson proved himself a worthy successor to John and Joel, complete with a falsetto he used to drive home the emotional points of his music. The self-analysis came through even on songs like "Bitchin' Summer," which on the surface seems trivial. He ended the set with two examples of his tuneful pop psychology. "Thoughts and Prayers," about complacency in the face of chaos, went perfectly with one about putting yourself first titled "Only the Best (From This Point On)."
