Pitchfork

I have two recurring dreams. The first: my feet are mysteriously attached to a skateboard (Birdhouse deck, Thunder trucks, 55mm Creature wheels) and no matter how hard I try not to, I somehow land every trick-- even the physically impossible ones. The second: I am walking down the Ocean City boardwalk when I see a band of bums napping in cardboard boxes. In the dream, I think to myself, "Wait a second. A band of bums...", and suddenly I turn into a bum and convince the other bums to start a band with me. The bums are reluctant. Then there's a fight of some sorts, then there's the kissing, and seconds later I wake up holding my hunting rifle and a copy of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

The skateboarding dream always made sense to me, but the band of bums one I don't know, I just never understood the appeal. Things started to click two years ago. In real life, Philly band Man Man, then performing as Gamelon, would show up for gigs with about 50 people in tow, half of them pushing shopping carts filled with recyclables, the other half carrying musical instruments straight off the Island of Misfit Toys: legless upright pianos, bent horns, clarinets made of human flesh, etc. I imagine that several of these instruments were trash-picked or, at the very least, made from pieces of trash. Man Man played songs that sound like Tom Waits, Captain Beef, and Frank Zappa, but there was something earthier about them, something twisted and gross and grimy (but not that kind of grime). Tom Waits' songs are heavyweight boxing matches we watch on pay-per-view; Man Man's debut, The Man in a Blue Turban With a Face, is an epic street battle between two Vietnam war vets fighting over who gets to sleep on the sewer grate.

Brand me with a scarlet R-- "R" for Rockist, the target-du-jour of East Coast music-writer McCarthyism-- but I'm struck most of all by Man Man's honesty. Lead singer Honus Honus isn't trying to sound like Waits; he really just can't sing, and the screams and grunts are his best approximations. Man Man doesn't play guitars on these songs either-- not because they're trying to get the CMJ "New Ideas in Indie Rock" wheels spinning, and not because they're parodying that Chicks On Speed song-- but because guitars are expensive and bar chords probably bore them. Several Men-Men in Man Man have moustaches. This isn't Vice Party hyper-irony though; this is December in Philadelphia, and their upper lips are cold.

Funny thing is, Man Man are spinning wheels. Trade in the six-strings for some trumpets, violins, and preschool choirs, and songs like opener "Against the Peruvian Monster" come along: strong melodies play off droopy rhythms, and the screemy-meemy call-and-response exchanges at the end sound scarier than Alien Vs. Predator, maybe even Leprachaun 2. On "10lb Moustache", Man Man kitchen-sinks saxophones, marimba bells, animal sounds, and stolen Steinways into a dirty-mouthed theme song for mutiny. "Zebra" cops Fiddler's avant-klezmer dog barks and clarinet melodies for Love Gone Wrong, and tops them off with bluesy bitterness: at the end, a freaky chorus sings, "You stung me bad/ What can I do?/ But leave the stinger in/ So I won't forget you." "Gold Teeth" takes the bright kindergarten melodies of "Peruvian Monster" and covers them in Coketown soot. The song could be about anything with lines like "Her hips are a warm sarcophagus", but Man Man, for all the song's fingernail dirt, rusty shaves and sleepwalking, still sound really tender. These are songs kids like Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger listened to before crying themselves to sleep.

For the second half of Man in a Blue Turban With a Face, Man Man trade up melody for mania. The band touches on Need New Body territory before mustering the album's most focused narratives. The gritty-gorgeous "I, Manface" is a first-person Roman tale of a boy raised by wolves, and the similarly involved "Werewolf (On The Hood Of Yer Heartbreak)", Man Man's throaty doo-wop closer, goes something like, "You're a diamond in the rough, baby/ A werewolf on the prowl, come and save me", but with the charm of say Elvis' "Don't Be Cruel", or the Drifters' "Under the Boardwalk". Sounds crazy, I know, maybe even impossible. But just remember: under the boardwalk, down by the sea, there are probably bums sleeping, so try not to wake them.