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ACL review: Man Man
When a band’s members play under pseudonyms like Honus Honus and Critter Cat, they’re bound to be bizarre.
And bizarre Philadelphia’s Man Man was, not just musically, but in every aspect. Their faces striped with red and white war paint, the five-piece took the stage dressed in short white shorts and t-shirts and proceeded to spastically bang out a series of cartoonishly sinister tunes with trumpets, xylophones and a drumset splashed with fluorescent paint, among other instruments.
But the band didn’t rely completely on antics. Honus’s rough-edged voice cut with an intensity similar to that of Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock, and the effortless manner in which the band stormed through the complicated time signatures and transitions in their songs proved their talent.
But Man Man will not appeal to everyone. The goofy falsetto filler that screeched over the organ whistles in many songs sounded like something straight out of a Tiny Toons Halloween episode, and it was often hard to discern any actual words in the verses between the jibberish.
The main problem with a band built around so many eccentricities is that the act is hard to sustain. After you’ve tapped out rhythms on a plaster makeup of your guitarist’s head, where can you go? Man Man actually took it down a notch and eased into a love song more melodic than anything they’d played all set, but then ran out of steam and left the stage 10 minutes early.
Man Man’s live show is certainly a spectacle, but it’s easier to stomach in smaller doses than this 50-minute performance.
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