Man Man

Man Man
2 September 2006: Vox Populi — Philadelphia

We are the hyperaware, hypercynical, hyperbored, hyper "different", and hypermisunderstood.

by Megan Milks
PopMatters Associate Events Editor
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Waitsian freak-out collective Man Man started their set with "Feathers." The opener to the band's new album, Six Demon Bag, it's one of the few songs they'd play that wouldn't be spliced through with ferocious manmade roars and high-pitched shovely bobblys. By "roars" I mean the kind of sound that makes waves out of an old lady's face -- blowing back the skin as in the video for Aphex Twin's "Come to Daddy." By "high-pitched shovely bobblys," I mean verbiage that rings like the Muppets sped into freakishly giddy chitchatter.

"Feathers" was one of the more somber songs pulled out by the five-man, 50-instrument band, and even it was given a touch of the ridiculous -- with a closing piano chord that was gleefully, unnecessarily high. In this way, it offered a nice preface to the identity crisis that Man Man would bring to the rest of their YAWWWW. YAWDADAW. Yaktaaw! Yaktooo! set.

Vox Populi is on Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts turf, and the art-school contingent was out in fine form -- the level of creativity in dress and hairplay was astounding, even for a Philly art-rock show. Paint chips kept falling on our heads as we clustered in a large, semi-rundown studio warehouse space -- part of the Vox Populi gallery -- to get our brains clonked around by Philadelphia's own Man Man as they warmed up for a three-month-long tour across the U.S., the U.K., and the Netherlands.

For a music venue, Vox Populi is kinda random. It's a fourth-floor space featuring depressed floorboards in spots, a handful of scattered chairs, and one, count it, one bathroom stall. The windows fogged up from humidity long before Man Man came out, as if to keep the show a secret from the surrounding city. The stage was barely a stage: a raised platform near the back of the space around which sweaty young people crowded in a tight circle, tossing heads, shoulders, knees, and hair so close they probably sweat-showered the band, only to be similarly showered in return. With the impact of every full-band wail, a little bit more of the ceiling fell on our dos.

All evening, I wondered if, irrespective of the band's prodigious talent, the attachment of such decorative aloofness to this particular segment of my generation is part of why Man Man connects so harmoniously with us: we, the hip ones who hate hipness and the hip/hipster backlash at the same time, who would never actually call ourselves such a dirty word, who know Wolf Parade and the Arcade Fire better than we know Waits and Beefheart, who are hyperaware, hypercynical, hyperbored, hyper"different", and hypermisunderstood. Man Man's sound mirrors our twentysomething segment, in which, finally, genuine emotion is emerging to lash back at the irony -- even as it is suppressed and undercut by still-rampant cynicism. It is constant self-contradiction, an identity crisis that Man Man seems to embody in its music. If "hysteric" weren't such a gendered adjective, it would be the label of choice.

"Court-jesterly" works almost as well, and the band's foolery became more evident live, as Honus Honus pogoed up from his keyboard throne simultaneously with drummer Pow Wow while all five musicians clanged on pots and drums like giddy chimps in a zoo cage. If you were to extract these quirks, along with the occasional meows and ooh la la!s, from the music, you'd be left with some pretty heart-wrenching material. Much of Man Man's work is moving, but any potential angst or oversincerity is immediately quashed by flourishes of well-placed drivel. If Honus Honus howls in broken-hearted pain, it generally takes place amid a cacophony of sound, with the rest of the band adding darkly comedic asides in falsetto.

By matching that howl, which is at once vulnerable and ferocious, and the often-despairing lyrics it contains with these sorta-silly deadpan comedic elements, the band creates a deeply crazed sound that mocks its own neuroses. And there we are, back to the culture of hip, of hyperconsumerist, overinformationalized broke people so overly intellectual and full of shit that every transmission is either sarcastic, cynical, or way too earnest. Man Man are equal parts absurdity and sincerity, and the combination is like, like, like R. Kelly or Ulysses or YAAWWW! YAWWWDADA! In other words, it gets us; we get it.

As I watched a hundred or more people mouth the words to "10 lb. Moustache" -- you know, like they all really felt it, like it was about them -- it was easy to see how bad these people relate to it, like they're as crazy and fucked up as the subject of the song ("people say you're strange but I don't buy a word of it / people say stay away from her cause she's a sinking ship"). Yeah. I know; nobody understands you or the one you love, or the way you love one another, because it's fucked up. You are all so strange and misunderstood and fucked up, that yeah, of course "you need pornography / to help you sleep at night." Doesn't that make you feel comfortably unique? Doesn't it make Honus Honus the voice of all your pain and fucked-up-ness? Except, of course, that the pain and fucked-up-ness are both undermined and reinforced by that crazy "meow meow" chorus, and that makes it a kind-of-funny song, not just a serious song. Like you; you're so quirky and absurd and twisted and serious, all at the same time! Aren't you? Aren't you! Your immediate and irrepressible love for this song merely confirms it.

Of course, you're wrong. That song is about me.

But I'm not a cynic. Not a cynic. Not a cynic.

It is, in fact, a completely great song. Gets better every time.

And then there's this other side of Man Man, the side that gets five voices spitting "gotta get it get it got it" 50 times over without twisting any tongues. It's the side that just goes for fucking broke on "Engwish Bwuud" (also known as "The Fee-fi-fo-fum Song") and "Push the Eagle's Stomach" -- a tune in which our heroes chant "Moustache, moustache, moustache, moustache" like a rallying cry. For sure, the band comes off like a train heading for a wreck at times, close to losing its grip on the tracks, but it always narrowly avoids derailing. This is the side of Man Man that takes fooling around to an experimental extreme, pushing to be as ridiculous as possible while still coming off as absurdly serious.

What I mean is, their shows fucking rule. With rarely a fraction of a beat that's not busy, there's hardly a second of down time. At Vox Populi, the band spoke little to the crowd, but who cared? They were in tune with us. We got the double-sax bonanza that is "Spider Cider"; we got a version of "Zebra" that held out the mid-song break to an excruciating, delicious tension; we got "Against the Peruvian Monster" and the big-band, slow-jam romp that is their cover of Etta James's "I'd Rather Be Blind." As a finale (no encore), we were treated to a brilliantly crazed performance of "White Rice, Brown Heart" that featured a guest vocalist spitting out the cartoonish responses to Honus's calls -- I didn't catch her name, but her capacity for verbal caricature is like, "how does she do that?" Then we were told to go home. Many, many times.

— 13 September 2006