Faces & Sounds

Pete Holmes wants you to know that he is not trying to elevate stand-up to some high-minded art form. He is perfectly content being, as he has called himself, a “Silly Silly Fun Boy” who gets by on the physical and vocal contortions of his act. The strategy works. He plays to his strengths of expressive physical comedy and linguistic nitpicks, embracing his cartoonish features to keep things resolutely light.

Taped at the Vic Theatre in Chicago, the special aired on HBO in December 2016 (and released as an audio album in July 2017), arriving at a pivotal moment in his career. Just a few months later, his semi-autobiographical HBO series Crashing would premiere. That show, produced by Judd Apatow, depicted the grit of the comedy hustle, but Faces & Sounds functions as the joyfully goofy product of that hustle. It is a snapshot of a veteran comic who has completely accepted his role as the genial, over-caffeinated giant of the stage.

Notable bits include a highly physical depiction of a rapper waiting patiently in a recording booth for his cue and an elaborate story about attending an Enrique Iglesias concert completely alone. He also pokes fun at the oddities of the English language, including a bit on the Venn diagram—which he insists on pronouncing “Sven diagram”—and a sequence where he imagines God giving him his cartoonish face and ordering him to “wear the uniform”. The set was well-received by critics who noted that under the juvenile surface lay the precise timing of a veteran performer.