Sophomore effort from this Philly area act that have been compared at moments to Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart, and Frank Zappa. They've also been lauded for their notorious live shows, even Rollingstone.com gave them the Best Stage Show SxSW 2005. There's more alternate-universe pop-hits here than previous efforts.
Man Man
Six Demon Bag
[Ace Fu; 2006]
Rating: 8.3
What a backward sophomore record. You'd think after all the Zappa/Waits/Beefheart darts thrown his way after the band's 2004 debut, lead singer Honus Honus would cut the gravel shtick-- the stache, too. Instead, he seems to have bought all three's entire discographies over again, zeroing in on Waits' freak empathy, Zappa's klezmatics and turnarounds, the Captain's sense of surprise. We know exactly what he's building in there. In the process, though, Honus lost his former bandmates, and possibly a lot more. This big-top ringleader whose barely prophetic ramblings and nauseous yelps we delighted in last time around as mere entertainment now asks us to move closer, listen not to the sounds, but to the songs-- the pleas for help.
I didn't expect people to dig The Man in a Blue Turban With a Face, same reason I wouldn't drag them to Deerhoof or put a plastic snake in their drink as a joke. Unfocused and sloppy and more of-the-moment than of-the-whole, that record was possibly the polar opposite of what some people value musically. This time out, Man Man's less sloppy but just as ramshackle, as if the snaps and crackles are the band's diversion from actually writing the record. As a song and title, the breakneck "Young Einstein on the Beach" might be more self-referential than the band intended.
They're still tending to the same changes, the same high-pitched call-and-response tropes, and the waltz time, and those parts can blur together a bit. But plenty of good moments pop out by relation: that "mous-tache mous-tache mous-tache" breakdown on "Push the Eagle's Stomach" with video game power-up sounds as the retrigger, the song's "So What" ending, the guitarless Sabbath riffs, the weird keyboard sound halfway between "96 Tears", and the noise made when two rubber Little Caesars dolls are scrubbed together. Or take the accordion melody on "Banana Ghost", or the dozens of great lyrical turns, such as on the appropriately sparse "Skin Tension" ("Let down my guard/ And there goes my heart/ Straight out the window again"), or on "Black Mission Goggles", something of a misfit toy remake of "Come Together" (Beatles, not Annie): "She's a warm bodega/ High on Noreaga," Honus shouts, thus giving Jens Lekman a run for his rap ref rep.
Just so you know, the line after "Noreaga" is this: "Strung out in Brooklyn cos I love her." Happens a lot here: The fun stops, the fa?ade is dropped for a split second, and suddenly Man Man's circus act isn't nearly as interesting as the tension of them maintaining it. That push/pull is why Six Demon Bag sticks so much more than the last. Granted, the band relies on the same structure for most of these moments-- percussion drops out, locker-room singing, then the sober line-- but damnit can they do sober: "You should always run with a loaded gun in your mouth," or, "When the night breaks, and the clouds shake, and your hopes ache, to someday be redeemed," or, "I know I'll never be the man that she thinks she really needs/ But it don't stop me from trying to be."
Despite/because, Man Man's most focused song here is also their most debilitating. On "Van Helsing Boombox", Honus hums and whistles along to the bell hook, delaying himself from articulating the actualities of a breakup: learning "how to speak a forgotten language", wanting "to sleep for weeks like a dog at her feet," falling in the street and howling at the moon. Think of the man you most admire-- your father, maybe-- then remember the first time you saw him cry. The song hits like that: broken and embarrassed and yards of dirt more convincing than your Glibbards and Blight Eyes.
Why "Van Helsing" works so well as an album track, though, is it really heightens the sudden change of heart on closer "Ice Dogs": Starts stubborn ("Am I supposed to close my eyes as you walk away from me?") but how quickly that old love again comes back-- chirpy horns, girl group shoo-wops, smiles for smiles. It's pathetic. It's fantastic drama, too-- rare for any work, let alone a fucking rock album, to pull off so well in 40 minutes. "C'est la vie/ Don't abandon me/ When the bridge burns down and the bad blood tastes like wine." Punch-drunk and happy for now, but it's still blood.
-Nick Sylvester, February 17, 2006
Review by Bret Love
Subjects of huge buzz at South by Southwest 2005 for their circus-of-insanity live show, Philly's Man Man comes across like Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart collaborating on a klezmer-influenced soundtrack to your scariest nightmare about killer clowns. The stripped-down opening track on their sophomore LP, "Feathers," almost borders on accessible, with a simple waltz-time saloon piano and multi-tracked vocals that sound about one whiskey shy of a drunken sea shanty. But by the time you get to track two, "Engrish Bwudd," the band has clearly given in to the temptation of overindulgence, with the whoops, wails, hollers, and growls of a musical madman singing "fee, fi, fo, fum" complemented by falsetto counterparts squealing "I smell the blood of an Englishman." It only gets weirder from there, with all manner of unusual instruments, discordant cacophony, and outlandish shrieking that'd make the Boredoms sit up and take notice, and please-quiet-the-voices-in-my-head psychotic freak-outs all finding their place in Man Man's alternate universe musical reality. Most of this stuff is just too damn weird for all but the most experimental music listener, but when the band reigns in its more outlandish tendencies on tunes like the almost poetic "Skin Tension" and the chugging "Black Mission Goggles," you get the sense there are some fine songwriters lurking beneath all the kitchen-sink craziness.
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