Man Man: TAS In Session
You have to expect the unexpected with Philadelphia's Man Man. The offbeat, experimental rockers whose love of eclectic instruments informs their wild, unpredictable live shows, released their fourth album, Life Fantastic, earlier this year via ANTI-.
The new record is a crafted step forward for the band who decided to work with a real producer for the first time. They chose wisely, collaborating with Bright Eyes and Monsters of Folk's Mike Mogis, the producer of choice for everyone from Jenny Lewis to The Faint.
Man Man is in the midst of a fall tour, playing Sacramento, CA tonight and wrapping up their road trip, appropriately, this Saturday, October 29, with the Hallowbaloo Festival in Honolulu. In addition, frontman Honus Honus, real name Ryan Kattner, is a part of the intriguing side project Mister Heavenly with Nicholas Thorburn (Islands, The Unicorns) and Joe Plummer (Modest Mouse, The Shins). That trio kicks off their tour on November 4 in Philadelphia, reaching New York's Mercury Lounge on November 20.
Not long ago Man Man's Honus Honus (Ryan Kattner), Pow Pow (Christopher Powell), Turkey Moth (Jamey Robinson), Chang Wang (Billy Dufala) and Jefferson — they tend use both their real names and monikers in conversation — dropped by The Alternate Side and delved into "Haute Tropique," "Pirhanas Club" and more. During soundcheck, they even fooled around with a marimba version of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven."
You can hear Man Man's session with host Russ Borris on TAS on 91.5 WNYE this Friday, October 28, at 11 a.m. or streaming on The Alternate Side.
Russ Borris: Honus, do you want to tell us about some of the instruments you have in the room today?
Honus Honus: No, Jamey, do you want to do it?
Jamey Robinson: We have a selection of instruments ranging from marimba, vibraphone to keyboards and drums. The moog’s not plugged in.
Honus: How is it not plugged in? Can we smoke in here?
Russ: New album is called Life Fantastic and you worked with Mike Mogis on this particular project.
Honus: We did. We did it in Omaha. We never really worked with a producer before, we worked with really talented engineers, but we never had someone else who kind of operated as another member of the band.
Russ: Was that weird?
Pow Pow: No, I think it’s great. We had a whole lot of stuff happening.
Russ: There’s a lot of darkness in the music and at times I get this dark carnival vibe to it. Where did those songs come from?
Honus: All the dark carnivals that I hang out at kind of rubs off. The cool thing about this band, it always has been, is that we all come from different places and bring different things to the table. I can bring my baggage to the table and then people can deal with it and come up with cool parts.
Russ: Is that how the songs start? You bring lyrics to the band? Honus: It changes. There’s songs … like we have a song that we’re going to play today called “Haute Tropique,” which was an instance of the music being brought [first] and I just had to carve out a story.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHydK-GyXU4]
Russ: When you come together as a band, how do all these instruments come together? Do you guy say, “I dig vibes, I dig xylophone?” A lot of these elements aren’t traditional. Influences?
Honus: They all start with a five guitar jam. We all sit around and jam for hours. We light wizard candles, we stare at a black-lit poster of Jimi Hendrix and then it all slowly begins to mutate into these other instruments. There’s really not any rules. Just whatever anyone decides to pick up. That’s what is great about all the players in this band. You can hand a water jug to Jamey and he can make it sound amazing. We left it in the van because we don’t use the water jug on any of these songs, but if you gave him a water jug and no synths, it wouldn’t sound good, but it would sound interesting.
Jamey: The biggest, bulkiest gear we can carry from venue to venue.
Russ: Not a fun ride to hit the road with all of this. Load in, load out, pack, unpack.
Honus: We have half the amount of equipment that we usually have.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vSgSdgErhA]
Russ: A lot of little movies, it feels like, on this record.
Honus: That’s cool. I feel like in a lot of our songs there’s cinematic aspects to it. Lyrically, I know it’s a collage of personal stuff and references.
Russ: Is soundtrack work something you’re interested in?
Honus: Yeah, if anyone wants to ask us.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG4LUh58bfc]
Russ: It has that carnival thing we were talking about. There’s a little bit of a tango vibe in it. Your vocal style, was it influenced by anything in particular? There’s a little Tom Waits vibe to what you do.
Honus: I kind of became the singer by default, we were going to get a girl singer. But then I kind of got stuck with it, but when I started, I decided I would scream as loud as possible, because I didn’t think we’d go past one record.
Russ: So you had no goals going into this?
Honus: I wanted to make a record. And I’m fortunate to be four records in, playing with great people.
Russ: So where did you find time to work on the Mister Heavenly project?
Honus: The Man Man record was already written, so there was a little dead time before we went to Omaha to record. As far as what I bring to the table, I’m not the most prolific. It was one of those rare instances where there was some space.
Russ: I read some reference to “doom wop” in terms of Mister Heavenly. Is that accurate to describe the sound of Mister Heavenly?
Honus: Yeah.
Russ: The song “Piranhas Club” definitely has that 50s feel to it.
Honus: That vibe’s been on all of our records. One of the big things on this record was that all of were listening to Joe Meek and his production quality. Even when Chris was tracking drums, he and Mike were talking about going for a certain drum sound for certain songs. The Joe Meek production stuff, like “Tornadoes.” Girl groups also — a big influence on Man Man. Shirley Ellis, “The Clapping Song.”
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPE4DxfMAyI]
