Man Man, The Extraordinaires

In a 2006 interview with Pitchfork Media, Man Man frontman Honus Honus, being asked about crowd reaction to his band’s extraordinarily intense live performances, said, “Nobody talks to me after shows… I don’t think I just give off the kind of vibe where anyone wants to talk to me. I’m usually soused after we play, too… you put it all out there, you’re not really worried about looking like a jerk or not.”

Honus may think he looks like a jerk, but the lack of approachability is a small price to pay for the visceral abandon that makes him the focal point of one of the most monolithically awesome live bands in modern indie rock.

At their Pittsburgh show last Saturday, the five men of Man Man–Honus Honus (vocals, keyboards, various trinkets), Pow Pow (drums, percussion), and multi-instrumentalists Sergei Sogay, Critter Crat and Chang Wang–never once spoke to each other or the audience. Instead, they preferred to cut the bullshit and never let up, pumping out a solid hour of manic, dense, melodic carnival hobo-core. Shambolic yet precise, the obviously well-rehearsed band needed barely to look at one another to immediately transition from song to song. Synthesizers, clavinets, bass guitars, euphoniums, sousaphones, pots, xylophones, pans, saxophones, melodicas, electric guitars, trumpets and even a Zube Tube appeared in the band’s set. Various instruments were grabbed and just as soon disregarded, often within the same song. Band members were often required to manically search for instruments that had earlier been thrown about the stage in the throws of performance.

And their song choice was superb, pushing down and letting off on the intensity with the effortlessness of a seasoned band in its prime. The set was culled mostly from their most recent album, 2006’s Six Demon Bag. Bag favorites such as “Banana Ghost,” “Engwish Bwudd,” and “Black Mission Goggles” were peppered with first album gems like “Lebra” and a couple of tracks from their forthcoming album Rabbit Habits.

Members of Man Man have often spoken in interviews of their dedication to keeping up the flow in their live performances, which may be the reason so many of their slower songs were noticeably absent. For the encore, however, the band closed with a ballad: their best song, the beautifully stark “Van Helsing Boombox.” Honus’ voice was shot from an hour of hysterical caterwauling, but his inability to hit all the notes didn’t hurt the song’s haunting flow. The crowd helped him out by belting every word.

For their part, the crowd, composed of wide-eyed high-schoolers and old-time indie fans in addition to the requisite twenty-something hipsters, absolutely ate it up. Wild waltzes and crazy jigs proliferated throughout. The front rows undulated as Honus, temporarily dressed in gold sparkly shawl and headband, jumped up from his seat to stalk the crowded stage, hopping on stools, keyboards and unused drums.

Opening band The Extraordinaires, also from Philly, only made Man Man look better by completely copping their style. They played a similarly Waits-inspired set of folksy rock and sea shanties. The lead singer overdid it with the bug-eyes, although he did have a totally sweet marine-styled custom guitar that looked like a shark, or possibly a narwhale. For some reason there was an epidemic of teenage girl grind-dancing to this band, which made no sense. But mostly everyone was wringing their hands, anticipating what they couldn’t have known would be the best show this usually skate-punk plagued venue had seen in quite a while.

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