Album Review: Open Your Heart The Men

14 May 2012 | 6:29 pm | Cam Findlay

Not at all swayed by contemporary trends, aesthetically against any notion of genre definition, and ready to experiment with any process that catches their fancy.

Time Out NY has referred to them as “Thurston Moore & The E Street Band”. I really don't understand that analogy at all, but then that just may be the point. The Men fall into a very distinct category of music: not at all swayed by contemporary trends, aesthetically against any notion of genre definition, and ready to experiment with any process that catches their fancy. Open Your Heart is a dirty, untreated testament to all of this.

Opener, Turn It Around, builds the belief that the record will be one of constantly banging, live-sounding garage rock. Not so. The last three years have seen the band play around with everything from hardcore punk to country to black metal. While Animal teases with some overwhelmed slide, Country Song obviously wears its sound on its sleeve. Building around almost novelty-esque wonky effects and spring reverb, it sounds like listening to Merle Haggard while on LSD and sitting at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Then there's side B. The title track might bring them aside their contemporaries like Lotus Plaza, but then Candy is the spitting image of the 'Stones acoustic period. It all finishes with the nitrous-fuelled bombast of Cube and Ex Dreams… but, typically, they're divided by the sludgy stoner/psych-rock of Presence.

There really is too much to wrap your head around here on the first listen. But, as the tracks go on, the inherent musicianship of The Men really sticks out in the way they can traverse styles without sounding gimmicky, instead keeping up the barely-restrained edginess throughout.