Man Man – Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, 23/04/08

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Way too many ludicrous compound genres get tossed around when it comes to hellish task of trying to describe the type of music that Philadelphia band Man Man creates. Along with blog tags like, Tom Waits, Frank Zappa, and Captain Beefheart, things like “Viking vaudeville,” “swampy carnival punk,” and “dirty soul rock” have all been touted as adequate descriptors for a band that can’t be caged by musical genus. So yes, all of the aforementioned fail to truly wrestle to the ground the reason behind Man Man’s staying power both on and off the stage.

This past Thursday they dropped a musical Oppenheimer on the uninitiated and veteran alike. Their rapid-fire approach to live shows (Man Man never stops for breaks between songs) truly represented the agile songs off the band’s self-touted “pop album” – this year’s brilliant Rabbit Habits . Consequently, Man Man’s yelping and clawing-at-the-air ubiquity left doubters stunned and the sold-out audience at Great American Music Hall panting for more (more).

Brooklyn’s Yeasayer opened the double-billed night with their multiple-pronged musical attack of soulful singing (via Chris Keating) frenetic psych rock tropes, and the sound of a new-age man lost in synthesized jungle (think African tribalism twitching out of the mold David Byrne set in the late 1970s and early ‘80s).

For the mercurial single, “Year 2080,” the band was joined on stage with members from fellow Brooklynites, Dragons of Zynth. The glam soul band provided backup vocals drove the post-apocalyptic song’s lyrics home, “In 2080 I’ll surely be dead/ So don’t look ahead/Never look ahead.”

Songs like the he band’s poppy new single, “Sunrise” and the crashing chorus of “Wintertime” synced up well with the psychedelic visuals projected on the dual white screens behind the band. After a couple songs Keating filled the crowd in on the band’s car troubles on the road, “we just drove 20 hours straight to get here. The drive through Colorado was beautiful but San Francisco is always our destination when we head west.” Despite their travails the band’s psychedelic tribalism cut deep enough and only dragged towards the end.

Man Man blew open the doors of their set with the first track off Rabbit Habits . The set included almost all of the songs from the new album but excluded well-executed but lengthy songs like “Whalebones” and “Poor Jackie.” Honus Honus never likes to take the air out of the proceedings with too many ballads but the ones he chose were some of his best: “Doo Right,” and “Van Helsing Boombox.” The band’s usual assortment of pots, pans, and noisemakers were used to grand effect. Where another band’s use of a slide whistle would seem tacky Man Man pulled it off with the frenetic “The Ballad of Butter Beans.” Honus ran around stage with a ragged sequin outfit/crown and preened for the balcony and stage right.

Just before the show seemd to be slowing down towards the middle songs like “Top Drawer” and “White Rice, Brown Heart” from The Man In A Blue Turban With A Face . On the latter, snappish vocal yells went hoarse and the crowd went crazy. By the time “El Azteca” came around the rest of the night saw crowd surfing as the norm. The encore saw it again with the ironically titled “Einstein on the Beach.” Man, is that one crazy song. And man are Man Man one crazy and great band to see live. You owe it to yourself to join in.

Setlist:

1) Mister Jung Stuffed

2) Banana Ghost

3) Hurly/Burly

4) Easy Eats Or Dirty Doctor Galapagos

5) Zebra

6) Big Trouble

7) Tunneling Through the Guy

8) New Song w/ Gregorian Chant Intro

9) The Ballad of Butter Beans

10) Top Drawer

11) Black Mission Goggles

12) Harpoon Fever (Qeequeg’s Playhouse)

13) Gold Teeth

14) White RIce, Brown Heart

15) Doo RIght

16) El Azteca

Encore:

17) Push the Eagle’s Stomach

18) Engwish Bwudd

19) Einstein on the Beach

20) Van Helsing Boombox