Goff's Pick of the Week- Open Your Heart by The Men

Imagine it is 1973 and you just fell into a time machine, or a time capsule or you went into a coma. Now imagine what would happen if you woke up from that coma, walked out of that time machine or were dug up from that time capsule. Obviously the first thing that you would ask about would be what ever happened to rock n’ roll. And if I were the first person you came upon I would hand you a copy of Open Your Heart by the Men. The Men perfectly define what rock is and can be in this era, they wear their influences right on their sleeves, influences that vary enough to encompass the entirety of rock history. From the country coos of The Rolling Stones brand of honky-tonk to the four chord power conveyed by punk acts like Black Flag, The Men combine these different elements seamlessly with garage rock revivalism and luscious hooks. They even work in a healthy amount of more modern guitar driven rock, rock established by acts like Deerhunter and Women. It’s a good mix, certainly. Like a DJ that hunches over their turntable looking for segments to sample, the Men combed over fifty years of music, picked out what they liked, and then played it back in a modern context. On paper it might not sound like that would work, but listening to Open Your Heart, it becomes pretty apparent that it does.

It was a few months ago when The Men gained some critical acclaim for their Leave Home mini album when I came across a link to all of their previously recorded albums. Having hear one of the tracks from Leave Home, I expected to hear more of the same out the earlier albums, but was surprised to find something very different. Those early albums are far more noise than rock, where the edges of Leave Home could probably be called rough, the early material could not be called anything less than jagged. More abrasive sound than actual songs, the rough and tumble no wave-esque material only highlights how well the group has been able to clean up their act. There was certainly an evolution, a well thought out engineered evolution that kept all the grit and grunts but added in the kind of songs that people actually want to listen to. Open Your Heart manages to be both well polished and chaotic in the same breadth, its sloppy in all the right ways. They come across like a No Age on adrenaline, certainly not as refined, but with that much more energy

I mentioned earlier that the Men seem to take elements from other acts, while this is certainly true of any album, the homage that is paid out here on Open Your Heart may be a little more deliberate than what some other groups would do. Does the beginning of the album sound a little like China Grove? Yep. Does Please Don’t Go Away sound a little like Girls’ Morning Light? Yep. Does Candy sound a lot like the Rolling Stones’ Dead Flowers? Yes again.  Are they exact copies? Absolutely not. While the songs may contain elements of other tracks, what impresses me most about The Men’s style in regards to how they refer back to other songs is that their own songs never explicitly lean on another song , meaning that if you took out the subtle reference the album would still be fantastic. I actually would say that it adds something to the album as a whole though, the way in which the Men straddle so many different influences without sounding like they overextended themselves or don’t have any ides of their own is impressive, and not entirely unlike what Chris Owens of Girls did when he blatantly ended a song with the Neil Young riff from Needle and the Damage Done. 

Have you clicked on any of the links that I embedded in this post? Because if you have not yet than I want to ask you a question. What kind of emotions do you think The Men convey in their songs? Are they angry, or at the very least rowdy? What types of lyrics would you expect to hear in their songs? As someone who has listened to their stuff a few times now, I still think of them as an angry band despite knowing better. Their lyrics are very much whiny, sort of like how Dinosaur Jr would complain about every single relationship that he had ever had turn south.  Somehow they don’t come across as sissies though, so that is a plus. Despite their moodiness the Men are quite capable of hitting the right emotional themes with their lyrics, while they are certainly not poets; there are a few moments where great lyrics pull through.

On the whole I am very much impressed by Open Your Heart. It’s downright fun on the first listen and the overall themes of the record make it worth coming back too. The middle three tracks in particular, Oscillation, Please Don’t Go Away, and the title track are particularly strong, I don’t think I have listened to them once without being impressed by the musicianship.