Return of the Mack

Actually, it's Liam McEneaney's debut album, in which he revels in being clueless with women

By Michael Shashoua / Jester editor-in-chief

On his debut album, “Comedian,” released October 1, New York comic Liam McEneaney regales his audience with tales from his not-so-distant youth – particularly “The True Story of Fast Eddie,” a classic right off the bat.

The title character has a genius idea – robbing a bank in the South Bronx because the police are unlikely to arrive quickly, or so he assumes. Needless to say, everything goes wrong. If this isn’t a true story, and McEneaney constructed it, all the more credit to him.

McEneaney presents himself and his material with generous helpings of self-deprecation, achieved often by building up a lot of bait, then pausing and pulling the switch on his audience. For example, in “Living Single,” he tells us he tried prostitution – and he did great, making $7. That’s the pattern.

In the same piece, he mentions that lots of guys want to be a woman’s first time. After another signature pause, he says, “Often I’ve been told that I’m a woman’s last time.” As you can see a lot of McEneaney’s self-deprecation is of course about sex and relationships. In “Everything I Know About Women,” he remarks that now since he’s in his 30s and never married, people ask “Is he O.K.?” and wonder if he’s on the “autism spectrum.”

In his defense, McEneaney says, he likes to think it’s as if he skipped that first starter marriage that everyone knew wouldn’t work out.

Throughout “Comedian,” it’s McEneaney’s tone and delivery that really make his material shine. The twists he presents, often like the proverbial other shoe dropping, work because of the meek personality he presents on stage.