Man Man Man Man Man Man Man (help, I can't stop!)
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My take on a Man Man show early last month...fun stuff. The full review's up at PopMatters today. Man Man + Who Shot Hollywood5 October 2007: Pearl Street — Northampton, MAMan Man is, if anything, still evolving, and, these days, you better be prepared for a surprise, especially when the time comes to play new songs.by Jennifer KellyMy fascination with Man Man goes pretty well back to the beginning, to an anonymous copy of The Man in a Blue Turban with a Face that landed on my review pile at some point in late 2005. It was different from anything I’d ever heard before—mad as barking dogs, alternatingly harsh and beautiful. It had a children’s choir, a doo-wop chorus, a ’40s jazz saxophone, a fascination with gorilla masks, and a fixation on thwarted love. At the time, I enthused: Man Man is a Philadelphia/New York-based trio exploring the outer edges of Afro-beat-tinged cabaret, xylophone-clinking dream narratives, and violin-darkened robot grooves....Their reference points are many—the mad theatricality of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, the Eastern European decadence of Dresden Dolls and Barbez, the expansively-defined percussionism of Skeleton Key and Mahjongg, the twisted lyricism of Tom Waits—yet ultimately insufficient. Man Man is what it is, intricate and overstuffed, rigorously rhythmic as it drives right over the edge.Since then, I’ve been to see Man Man a few times, in successively larger venues with ever-larger, ever-younger crowds. I’ve digested an excellent second album, populated by an almost entirely different band (frontman Honus Honus is the main link). I’ve interviewed Honus twice and his drummer Pow Pow once, and still have no idea how to treat their bizarre nicknames in print. Along the way, I’ve gotten comfortable with one of the oddest aesthetics in indie rock. In fact, maybe I’ve gotten a little too comfortable. Man Man is, if anything, still evolving, and, these days, if you go to a show to hear “Zebra” and “Spider Cider” and “English Bwudd”, you’d better be prepared for the new stuff as well—more pounding and drum-crazed than anything on the two existing records. More here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/concerts/50501/man-man-who-shot-hollywood/ Live video:
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