My older brother gives me shit sometimes about my taste in music. Not so much about what I like, but rather about what I don’t. He claims I don’t like most popular Pop Music (which I do not) because other people do (which is false).
When I was younger, maybe this was true, though I would’ve raged against the implication with the sharpest tool I could find. These days, I’ve got no problem with other people enjoying Beyonce, Imagine Dragons, P!nk, One Republic, Robin Thicke, and all the rest. In a crowded stadium, “Living On A Prayer” gets fans up and making noise. At a wedding reception, “All I Do Is Win” gets more asses shaking than would even the greatest country-rock. As a scene-setter, a random playlist full of Jay-Z and Neon Trees and Eminem is going to bind people more securely than will a random playlist of performers only one person in the room knows anything about.
Pop Music is designed to be fun and uncomplicated, and to please the greatest amount of people possible. It brings folks together, at least in part, because a majority of people just don’t give a shit about music to the degree of someone who chooses to write about it, nor those who invest themselves in any degree of underground fandom. When one listens to enough music from enough different sources, though, one hears so many different approaches that those easiest to digest cease to be interesting. It’s our curse as writers and avid fans to like things that most other people neither know nor care about. We take it as our sacred vow to listen to whatever we can and then expose our favorite music to the “masses”, whereas a simple majority of everybody else is perfectly fine with U2 and Katy Perry and keeping tabs on what Rihanna’s up to. There is nothing wrong with that, either. Everyone should have fun with their respective tastes. Live, let live, and onward we go.
Okay, tough guy, you’re thinking: if you’re not into Pop Music, then what are you into?
This new record by The Men, for starters. Tomorrow’s Hits. Whoa baby, this shit rocks.
Almost a week after first listening to it, I haven’t listened to any other albums by any other artists. There have been other playlists, but there have been no other records. That initial opening “BUM-BUM-bana, bana, BUM-bana, bana” of “Dark Waltz, “and I was hooked. This is the only music I want to hear right now. Tomorrow’s Hits, for me, is a new acquaintance I just realized I have a zillion things in common with; the signature dish at a new restaurant that’s the tastiest thing I can remember ever tasting.
This is some of the best American rock and roll I’ve come across in ages, mostly because it feels the most honest. The Men seem to understand that certain bands make certain compromises to mold and shape their vision, but these compromises are not necessary, nor need always be made. Perhaps that opening track lingers on a bit longer than it’s perfect version might, but on and on it does, and it’s that same sense of going where one will that, two songs later, yields the delicious instrumental interludes of “Another Night”. The spirit is punk, but with a great deal of piano in the mix.
The passion is undeniable, as is their sense of melody, and the best song pivots around a guy yelling “I hate being young!” A couple tunes after that, the locomotive one-chord fever dream of “Pearly Gates” provides energetic sandwich-filling between the most tuneful rye bread ruckus on either side.
The cover even gives a spiritual shout-out to Big Star, so, I mean, come on.
Go to The Men’s website, and one of the first things you’ll see is an open solicitation for a new touring van. This group isn’t going to be selling out your local mid-sized venue any time soon, because they won’t be playing it. Rather, they’re at the club down the block where it doesn’t seem like much goes on except those nights when twenty or thirty tatted-up dudes and ladies are smoking cigarettes outside as a muffled cacophony rages within. The one that sits empty during daylight hours and smells kind of funny, with the friendly, gracious bartenders and cheap draft beer that tastes like feet.
That said, they should be playing bigger venues. No one, to my ears, is playing rock music that gets into your bones more efficiently than that on Tomorrow’s Hits. Had they made a few more concessions or allowed greater outside input, maybe more people would know who The Men are by now, but that would have diluted their potent brew. As it stands, they’ll find that new van and hit the road with this rock and roll in one hand and a pound of dynamite in the other, no telling what might happen when those two things combine, nor who might be there when they do. But it will be awesome, wherever it is and whoever is there to see it, and that’s what’s most important.
Because there’s nothing wrong with Pop Music that everybody knows. I’m just way more into this, and you should be, too.
Rating: 5/5