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In rotation: Part Time’s ‘What Would You Say?’

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A series in Sunday Calendar about what Times writers & contributors are listening to right now...

Alternate ending to John Hughes’ “Pretty in Pink”: Instead of crashing the prom in her homemade dress, Molly Ringwald shuts her bedroom door, puts on a black light and takes a few swigs from her dad’s codeine cough syrup. She puts on a record, listening through headphones, and eases onto her bed. A wash of music hits her ears: It’s Part Time’s debut record, “What Would You Say?” the project of lone synthesizer bandito David Speck out of San Francisco.

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Though the record dropped this month, 25 years later than “Pretty in Pink,” elements of it sound smuggled out of the Reagan era, with layers of smeary keys, karaoke-soft drum machines and a bleary sense of last-call romance defining it all.

The single that’s been bouncing around the blogs, “I Wanna Take You Out,” has some guitar threading through it, but it’s mostly a shimmery pile of electronic texture and detail that’s equal parts shiny and damaged. For all its slouchy, battered charms, “What Would You Say?” is actually a studied case of blasé. On “In This Filthy City,” Speck sings with a strained pain that can barely bother to be roused, “If I lose my cool, I die.” He doesn’t seem in danger of losing it any time soon.

— Margaret Wappler

Part Time
“What Would You Say?”
Mexican Summer

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