The Observer, April 11, 2008
Volume XL, Issue 24
Man Man releases lyrical stunner, junkyard noises
In an interview with Pitchfork Media last summer, Man Man frontman Ryan Kattner (better known as Honus Honus) stated that their newest album, Rabbit Habits, was shaping up to be the band's pop album. This would have been unsettling for Man Man fans if afterward, Kattner didn't follow it up with a claim that their previous album, 2006's Six Demon Bag, also felt like their pop album. Anyone who perceives an album with songs like "Young Einstein on the Beach" and "Push the Eagle's Stomach" to be a pop album must have a severely skewed definition of "pop music."
Luckily, it is this skewed perception on music in general that has endeared Man Man to its fans since their first album, 2004's The Man in a Blue Turban With a Face. Those familiar with the band's stylings will find more of what made Man Man so enjoyable in the first place: off-the-wall yelps, cacophonies of percussion, and dark, minor key tonality. Those uninitiated will hear a pop album unlike any other they've heard before.
While Man Man has established a recognizable and comfortable formula for their material, Rabbit Habits finds the band refining their sound slightly and tightening loose screws. No longer do their standard starts, stops, and bursts of noise seem random for the sake of being random. Rather, they now feel integral to the songs' structures, adding color to the music without sounding contrived. Furthermore, while the band will probably forever be indebted to the works of Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart, the comparisons have begun to dwindle now that Man Man has developed their own style. Waits and Man Man both sound like they deal in junkyards, but while the Grim Reaper inhabits Waits' junkyard, restless, devilish children run Man Man's.
Comparable to their intense live performances, Rabbit Habits is filled with vigorous energy from the start, only letting down in the album's closer, the funereal and gorgeous "Whalebones." Between the frantic marimba rhythms of "The Ballad of Butter Beans," the boozy horns of "Big Trouble," and the twisted carnival swing of "Easy Eats or Dirty Doctor Galapagos," the men of Man Man leave no object unbeaten and no instrument untouched within reach. Drummer Christopher Powell (aka Pow Pow) especially sounds great on the album, keeping a powerful, tight beat on "Top Drawer" and whose hi-hat pulses define "Mister Jung Stuffed" and "Harpoon Fever (Queequeg's Playhouse)."
It is Honus Honus, though, who steals the show, for underneath the giddy and lunatic music lies an impressive set of haunting lyrics that is at once both abstract and resonant. The title track, which takes its cue from previous Man Man ballads like "Van Helsing Boombox," concerns itself with a man "who don't even taste the food he eats anymore." The melancholic piano-and-bass clarinet duet concludes stating, "He don't wanna dine alone/And she don't wanna die alone/And he wants to eat to live." On "Whalebones," Honus continues to observe dark interactions between human beings. "He's tired of being human," he sings, "He wears her close to the bone as though she were his own skin." Such heartfelt ruminations provide another dimension to the band, keeping them from wallowing exclusively in carnival antics.
The album's finest moment, the epic, tempo-shifting "Poor Jackie," serves as a simple guide to almost everything that the band can offer. Its dark imagery, both musical and lyrical, builds and builds until ending with a repetition that "there ain't no God here, as far as I can see." This culmination of the band's efforts establishes Man Man's potential thus far in their career. The entire Rabbit Habits album shows that the group can successfully refine their sonic assault while maintaining their musical and lyrical niches and still put out an excellent record. The fans will eat it up, and if you feel like you can handle a pop album with lyrical motifs like "She feels life's a dog on fire," then welcome to the junkyard.
