Open Your Heart
The Men break all kinds of rules. Their music’s bark is as bad as its bite; it rages and pummels, burying perfectly capable hooks and melody under an avalanche of guitars. Yet they do it so smartly, so efficiently, that not a riff is wasted, not a layer of grime yearns to be wiped away. And they dare make instrumentals a large part of their weaponry (one even mixes twangy slide guitar with a Spacemen 3 haze). They serve up songs that easily crash the three-minute barrier, with two beauties clocking in at more than seven minutes each. The Men unabashedly beg, borrow, and steal: their last LP title (*Leave Home*) was lifted from The Ramones, and riffs and tones on songs like “Open Your Heart,” “Animal,” and “Oscillation” are inspired by antecedents The Buzzcocks, The Damned, and Sonic Youth. The clamorous assault of guitarists Mark Perro and Nick Chiericozzi recalls the sheer power of bands like Hüsker Dü and The Stooges. So why aren’t we complaining? Because each release by The Men leaves us a little more in awe, and they prove, again, that punk rock seeds sown 35 years ago can still sprout fresh, green shoots that impress and thrill.
Ironically referred to by Time Out New York as "Thurston Moore & the E Street Band," The Men have never been a band to play by categorical punk subgenre rules.
The Brooklyn quartet's excellent new LP treats the last four decades of rock music like an amusement park rather than a museum.
“I wanna see you write a love song / I wanna see you going down / I wanna see you when you try so hard / I wanna see you when you turn it around,” sings guitarist Nick Chiericozzi on “Turn It Around,” the first track of The Men’s Open Your Heart. The song does indeed signal a turnaround for the band. After a…
Starting in the late aughts, buzzwords like chillwave, insert-adjective-here reverb, and witch house dominated the underground rock lexicon, leaving listeners at a bit of a loss for sounds with, shall we say, cajones, but along with recent bands like Iceage, Merchandise, and Broken Water, the Men brought grit and guts back into the equation.
The Men's Leave Home, gracing many a Top 10 list last year, was a wonderful mess. The band boasts three separate songwriters, and a conscious no-particular-focus ethos that lets them explore whatever direction they damned well please, with in-the-red gust
Brookyln's the Men celebrate noisy US indie-rock in all its many forms on their third album, writes <strong>Tom Hughes</strong>