Man Man is one of these bands which give intense, exuberant and unpredictable performances… and I knew nothing about them. I got to see them on Friday night at the El Rey theater and got caught by surprise: surprised there were so many people, surprise everybody was so excited and into the music to the point of crashing on stage and constantly jumping with their arms in the air.
Their stage set up had a little bit of everything, a sort of wacky street art display with doll hands and bicycle wheels, and if the piano, played by frontman Honus Honus, led many of their songs, the other four guys who go under the funny stage names of Pow Pow, Chang Wang, Turkey Moth, and Jefferson (well this last one is not that funny), played all sort of instruments that I could not always identify but there supposedly were a ‘clavinet, Moog Little Phatty, sousaphone, saxophone, trumpet, French horn, flute, bass clarinet, drum set, euphonium, Bass, Danelectro baritone guitar, xylophone, marimba, melodica and various percussive instruments including pots and pans, kazoos, chinese funeral horns, spoons…’
Eccentric? Not even close, they are a fun, colorful circus act and a cabaret show at the same time, with costume changes, war paints on their faces, red light snake garlands, tons of energy and more crowd sing-alongs than you can bear. Five wild men with no inhibition and trying a little bit of everything as long as they have fun and can get this fantastic reaction from the crowd.
Their music is a mixed bag, a bric-a-brac with plenty of hooks and puzzling detours, disconcerting pianos, exotic sounds, visceral screams, middle-Eastern-ish raucous vocals, lots of ooos-ahaas, funny cartoonish voices, and random noises coming from some gadgets. They simply have no musical niches, mixing cheesiness and brio, but always cultivating originality with film noir soundtrack, tango, cabaret, funhouse, and frontman antics.
And then, there are the lyrics that I had to come back to once home. Take ‘Feathers’ for example, that they played as an opener of the show, with its beautiful and moving piano and sing-along of tearing lines like ‘I know you need to find what you thought you left behind in a past life/I won't question why the only light that you have you give away’, or the song they closed the show with Van Helsing Boombox’ ‘I want to sleep for weeks like a dog at her feet/even though I know it won't work out in the long run’, ha, so much drama, so much despair sung with such optimism.
But Honus Honus did not stay always behind his piano, he did his walking-along-the stage-crazy number twice, once wearing a long khaki trench coat, another time wearing a sort of black glittering laced dress, shooting confetti over the crowd with a long wood tube… Weirdos? Well, they are hard to follow musically and physically, their chaotic and funny melodies are all over the place with some brilliant moments beaten by wild rhythms, screams and outbursts of sax or trumpets.
They came for an encore with the syncopated piano of ‘Life Fantastic’, the titled track of their last album, just released a few days ago, and the in-your-face bluesy ‘Engrish Bwudd’, with the fantastic help of Shilpa Ray (who opened the show) on these two songs, singing the curious chorus ‘I smell the blood of an Englishman’, with delicious malice.
Every band has to have a shtick, Man Man has plenty of them, but they have also talent, a real talent for an odd and carnivalesque playhouse, without taking themselves seriously at all.
Setlist (according to setlist.fm):
Feathers
Hurly/Burly
Piranhas Club Play Video
Mister Jung Stuffed Play Video
Top Drawer
Dark Arts
Haute Tropique
10lb Moustache
Easy Eats Or Dirty Doctor Galapagos
Doo Right
Bangkok Necktie
Shameless
The Ballad of Butter Beans
Sarsaparilla
White Rice, Brown Heart
Encore:
Life Fantastic
Engrish Bwudd
Spider Cider
Oh, La Brea
Van Helsing Boombox