System Overload

As for the lyrics, which Moyer delivers in an exuberant yelp during his turns at the mike, they tend to accentuate personal politics over the global kind. "Defcon," for instance, pairs couplets such as "Defcon goes from '1' to '5' / So we can know to run and hide" with a hyperkinetic rhythm that pumps at around 130 beats per minute. "It's a song about the world we live in today, where there's all this paranoia going on about who's got a bomb, who's going to have a bomb, is it a dirty bomb, is it a hostile weapon. I don't feel I'm in a position to say, 'We shouldn't ever have a war' or 'All war is bad.' But I feel I am in a position to say, 'I'm scared as hell to leave my house with all these people so angry at each other.' "

Such fears help explain why Moyer's feminine alter ego espouses a cheeky philosophy that embraces escapism. As he writes on www.ediesedgwick.biz, "Edie Sedgwick subverts the illusory opposition of substantial/substanceless, and so subverts the tired opposition of modern/postmodern." Or, in simpler terms, "Think about the last time you traded snide remarks about the end of history at a cocktail party. Wouldn't you rather have been talking about how you wept when Ralph Macchio died in The Outsiders?"

Sure, but because Her Love Is Real's music is more rudimentary and considerably less catchy/clever than the Always Never Again fare, Moyer's off-kilter meditations on celebrities such as "Martin Sheen," "Molly Ringwald" and "Haley Joel Osment" quickly wear thinner than Kate Moss. For that reason, some reviews of the disc have been downright vicious. Nevertheless, Moyer favors nastiness to indifference.

"Of course I'm bummed when someone isn't into my album," he says. "But I would rather be memorably horrible in kind of a funny way than be mediocre. There are so many mediocre bands that exist in the world. You see them; you play with them. It's a litany: 'We're four dudes in an instrumental guitar-rock band.' And after a while, I'm like, 'Can't we just have a law against this?' At least I tried something different. Maybe it failed. Maybe it got through to some people. It was something I tried, though. It was my vision, and maybe it made someone think, as opposed to them just turning off their record player."

Edie has generated oodles of publicity for Moyer, but the press hasn't necessarily translated into ticket sales. Despite a slew of write-ups in advance of a recent Sedgwick show in Minneapolis, Moyer says, "only ten people came." No wonder he's so enthusiastic about Supersystem and his Justin Destroyer persona. "I never thought I'd be able to do what I'm doing now: living this life, having so many wonderful people being so supportive of this music and touring to so many places," he says. And then, the next morning, "I'm Justin Moyer again. I wake up; I make oatmeal; I read a book; I go to poker nights. I'm just me."

Sybil couldn't have said it better.