An acquired taste,
but highly addictive

Music Row
By Brian Rademaekers

Tuesday night in Spring Garden will be an evening of mad sonic experimentation, a perfect greeting to usher in the wild-eyed unpredictability and rabidity that the summer heat always seems to bring to the city’s streets.
For the first time since their gig with Modest Mouse, Philly-bred weirdos Man Man will be freaking folks out on their home turf, this time at the Starlight Ballroom.
Starting with their 2004 debut, The Man in a Blue Turban With a Face (Ace Fu), Man Man have been unleashing a steady stream of bizarre gems that are hair-raisingly strange and fantastically rocking.
The local five-piece, made up of members with monikers like Honus Honus, Pow Pow, and Cougar, is most often lumped into the "experimental" set, which in a way suits their follow-no-path style of songwriting. But more accurately, Man Man are downright psychotic. Thankfully, that lunacy is expressed in a way that mashes together Captain Beefheart, late Tom Waits and mesmerizing Gypsy harmonies.
Horns, gruff vocals and viscously thrashed keys meld into smoking guitar riffs and riotous percussion to create thrilling, foot-stomping jams. And no matter how many funky influences their multi-directional sound (often interspersed with creepy schizophrenic sound effects) takes in, the underlying drive is always one of staggering energy.
Their songs are complexly layered machines of noise that drive forward, constantly building into ever madder tapestries of sound.
Take Black Mission Goggles, from their 2006 album Six Demon Bag. From the start, the jam swelters with tribal skin-pounding, quickly falls into a dizzying klezmer riff, and is followed by throaty vocals tempered with a soft female accompaniment. Midway through that madhouse, the cacophony reaches a tipping point and halts for a dreamy, melodious interlude — and then spikes the listener right back into the heat that started the song to finish out in a rain of thundering drums.
It is a sound not for the faint of mind, or ear. Those who go to see Man Man shouldn’t look for neat, simple or digestible songs. But for those who loved it when Tom Waits came out with his dark, angry and murderous Real Gone last year, Man Man will fit the bill. The same goes for fans of albums like Beefheart’s wild howling on 1969’s Trout Mask Replica, Herbie Hancock’s 1970 Mwandishi or Frank Zappa’s whacked-out rock satire on the 1974 Apostrophe.
Even if Man Man leave you bewildered and overwhelmed at your first listen, hang in there (you can do a little free experimentation yourself at r5productions.com).
Like being plunged into a foreign land, the freaked-out world of psychedelic sea chanties created by these Philly trailblazers can leave an unsuspecting victim disoriented. But once you’ve got the ear for it, the madness becomes addictive and liberating. What starts out as a terrifying mosaic of noise drifts into a glorious, sometimes humorous, jamboree that celebrates unbridled creativity.
Man Man are also well-known for their voracious live performances, their furtive pace visually accented by a band that often takes the stage garbed in outfits of a single color, their faces streaked with war paint.
Helping to ease the brave into the hometown headliners will be Deerhunter, a similarly experimental band from Atlanta. These southern rockers shoot for a much more mellow feel, employing shimmering guitar work with punk-on-downers vocals for a decidedly cool mind trip.
Oh — and also look out for O’Death, a troupe of bearded, shirtless beasts best known for their junkyard percussion section, banjo plucking and coyote-yelp vocals. oo
All this is to take place on the worn wood floors of the Starlight, a former Chinese ballroom in a noticeably seedy section of Spring Garden.

What you need to know

Who: Man Man, Deerhunter, and O’Death.
What: A triple helping of maddeningly good rock, served up in a style all its own.
Where: The Starlight Ballroom, 460 N. Ninth St.
When: Tuesday, July 10, at 9 p.m. Tickets are $10. ••