Album Review: The Men- New Moon

The Men

New Moon

**** out of *****

Take a messy mix of punk, arena ready riffs and country laced piano dip it in the yings and yangs of teen aggression and loneliness and you can only hope to get a disk as good as The Men's New Moon. Expanding their sound even more then on 2012's Open Your Heart, The Men have made an exhilarating rock and roll record.

Things here are aren't cohesive, there isn't a set plan and songs can feel rushed, all of that adds to the overall feeling of confusion the band seems to be conveying with their tunes. Lyrics ponder poetically the mixes of a relationship, with questions of "joining" and "surrounding", lots of me and you's seem to clutter the words sung by a variety of voices.  Love and fear, questioning of the future form the basis of a kind of upbeat layered neurosis that pushes the tunes rapidly along. 

Variety is all over this disk, in the instrumentation, the style of playing and the presentation."Open The Door" plinks a piano and puts an acoustic folk tinge on things before the swirling garage psychedelica of "Half Angel Half Light". "Without A Face" mixes punk power and chaos jamming with a harmonica, the looseness can be overwhelming while invigorating, as if the band has no shackles but is afraid to fly and that tension is exciting, showing flashes of Lou Barlow penned Dinosaur Jr tunes.
      
"I Saw Her Face" sums this up starting off loud but lazy, questioning, before kicking up the tempo and slamming like a car down a highway before it crashes into a ditch in fantastic Crazy Horse fashion (without a Neil Young figure driving). "The Brass" plays the punk up before wah-wah guitar endings, and "Electric" flashes a Ramones loving nod. "Bird Song" has some weeping guitars that get overshadowed by the pumping harmonica as the organ and drums into a country rock feel, not far from The Band. 

The relaxed art and power aggression mix is alluring as The Men seem to be able to go in a million directions and sometimes they want to do it all in the same song. This powerful 5 piece strum the correct chords and messy freedom with which New Moon is presented and skuzzily produced allowing for a teenage sense of wonder, and isn't that what rock and roll is all about?  
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We really dig this disk, I mean, REALLY dig it. This style of tunes is right up our alley, the band has a follow up EP that they recorded while making this album and we can't wait to hear it. We caught their set at 4 Knots this year, but The Men are easily a band we need to pay more attention to going forward. Hopefully we can catch them in November in Brooklyn.

Support the band here, buy the album here and peep some video below:
"I Saw Her Face"

"Without A Face"

"Bird Song"