First things first, I really, really like this band. A lot. Leave Home is one of my favorite records of the past couple of years. Open Your Heart was one of my most anticipated releases of this year. And I really, really like it. A lot. But I've never before been simultaneously so very into a record and intellectually bothered by it. It's a hard contradiction to compute. So I tried to make some sense of it here.
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Look, I know the new The Men LP sounds FUCKING AWESOME. And I know why I think Open Your Heart sounds awesome.
The record engages directly with my rock-n-roll lizard brain. If my brain stem programmed a classic rock station, Open Your Heart is
pretty much what it would sound like.
The Buzzcocks followed by The ‘Mats followed by some SST hardcore followed by Spacemen 3 followed by
Sonic Youth. And, yeah, that’s like
radio in heaven, but for a record released in 2012, it is also a problem. Potentially.
Beyond the sheer viscerality of the thing, it’s easy to
break down why it works. As I suggested
above, The Men lift from all the right people, but anyone can do that. A lot of lame “retro” bands do
that. What The Men really bring to the
table is a mastery of context and sequencing.
When they “borrow” a riff, they generally shift, however subtly, the
way we perceive it. What if “Suspect
Device” was the best Foo Fighters song?
What if The Buzzcocks were from Minnesota and liked Tom Petty? Granted, these shifts aren’t huge. It’s not exactly M.I.A. doing her thing over
The Clash (or Diddy over The Police, take your pick), but it’s enough to keep
the tracks fresh. And the way the
record is sequenced ensures that the well-worn micro-genres The Men inhabit
never seem stale. Most of all, what The
Men do is tinker. They’re Walt and Jesse
in the meth lab, tweaking formulas in pursuit of the purest fix. So make no mistake, there's nothing really new here, just reconfigurations. What The Men do now seems analogous to a jazz
musician reinterpreting standards. It’s repertory
music,* which is fine, I guess, as long as the music is compelling. Which it is.**
OK, but here’s where things get tricky. Everything I’ve written above presupposes
that The Men are actually thinking about genres and context and history and the
semiotics of a specific riff, but to hear them tell it in recent interviews, they
don’t think about any of that stuff at all.
Not in the slightest. That’s just your baggage, man. The Men just
want to jam. There are two ways to
process this information. The first is
to call bullshit. Suggest it’s just a
pose they’re striking: four smart guys pretending to be dummies with guitars
channeling inspiration. C’mon. They know exactly what they’re doing. Or you can take it all at face value. It is
all our baggage, man. Don’t think about
it so much. So, where do I stand? I’d like to think it’s at least
partially a pose, because I don’t want The Men to not be thinking about this
stuff. If everything above is
accidental, a coincidence, then that makes their new album worse. Things shift from purposeful appropriation to
accidental plagiarism. Artistic intent
matters. Just like we should think about
what we’re consuming, artists need to think about what they’re making.
Then there’s the media. According to Metacritic, the new LP is one of the most highly regarded rock records of the
year. The acclaim is pretty much universal. This is, critically at least, a breakthrough
record. Obviously, this has nothing to
do with the band itself, really. I get
the impression that The Men would be content to exist within their niche. Even if the general sound of Open Your Heart seems engineered to make
friends, I don’t think they give a shit about any of this stuff, really. They’re on a tiny label. They hand screen record sleeves. They are DIY to the core. Nevertheless, media reception matters,
because it suggests that for this generation of critics and taste-makers, the ideal rock record is a
perfect nostalgia trip. Man, I hope that’s
not the case. If so, how will rock music move forward with any significance? Critically, it suggests that rock's future is repertory, and that somehow seems
unacceptable. Unacceptably boring, at
least.
I’ve talked this over with a few people. Those that have mustered up the energy to
care about it at all have generally suggested that I shouldn’t think about it
so much. If it sounds good, it is
good. That’s that. But I don’t think that’s necessarily
true. If popular music is ever going to
transcend its current disposability, it needs to be worth thinking about, and the best of it should stand up to some scrutiny. It’s simple. As a society we’re great at mindlessly
consuming, but we can’t survive on junk food alone. Is Open
Your Heart just critically acclaimed junk food? Probably not, but it’s walking a fine line,
and it all depends on how The Men develop. They only have three legit LPs to their
name. There’s not enough evidence. Where will they go from here? Maybe more importantly, how will they go from here? In six months will anyone even care?
So, where does this leave us as listeners? As fans? It’s impossible to tell. History will play out. It's OK to be conflicted about the things you consume, I suppose. One thing that I’m certain about is
this: none of the above means I’m going to stop listening to Open Your Heart, because, you know, it sounds FUCKING AWESOME. But it’s awesome like doing donuts in a
parking lot. Sure, it feels great, but it’s
not going to get you anywhere.
Eventually, you have to get on a highway.
*This is not to say that all rock-n-roll is repertory. There are a lot of bands I love that exist
within a lineage or tradition, but there are very few good bands whose music seems so almost mathematically derived from
the work of others as The Men’s.
**But none of this sort of thinking seemed necessary with Leave Home, and I don’t know what that
means, really. Does it mean that one is the
stronger record? Maybe. The songs on Open Your Heart are probably better (although Leave Home’s “Think” remains my favorite), but one thing’s for sure: Leave
Home never felt anything less than vital.
That record felt necessary. And
it seems indelible. It never felt like a simulacrum of anything,
which is something that can’t be said for Open
Your Heart.
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