"huh-HAAWWWACK." I don't know if I transcribed it properly, but Chris Hansell's revolting cough, which appeared midway through the Men's 2011 LP Leave Home, was pretty much everyone's favorite lyric from the record. Understandably so. While Leave Home was often ugly and brutal, it felt almost physically necessary, an allergic reaction to the repression of all things abrasive and loud amidst indie rock's digitized echo chamber. The music itself was bracing enough, but perhaps the biggest shock of all was hearing a Brooklyn band that didn’t carry themselves like they were primarily motivated by a desire to make friends.
But for fans of aggressive indie rock as described in Our Band Could Be Your Life, that's an easy image to project on the Men and, as the band told us in a Rising interview earlier this year, not necessarily a correct one. Now a steady four-piece, they're setting the record straight on Open Your Heart, the title of which is so plainspoken and commonplace it's easy to overlook just how much the band backs it up by maintaining every last bit of visceral power of Leave Home while letting in so many more people to the party. Open Your Heart is both tremendously physical and friendly, knocking you on your ass one second, then immediately helping you back up to put a beer in your hand.
And I can't stress the word "party" enough, because it's difficult to remember a rock record that managed to be this much fun without resorting to cheerleading. Most people I've played opener "Turn It Around" for have remarked on its resemblance to Foo Fighters' introductory salvo "This Is a Call". It's pretty on-point: Mark Perro's vocals sound remarkably similar to those of a young Dave Grohl on this particular song, but what's crucial is how they align in spirit. "Turn It Around" comes off like a tribute to the pure rejuvenating powers of rock'n'roll itself by going nuts with all the things that got you hooked the first time: breakneck Zep riffs! Duel-guitar leads! Drum solos! It's essentially a teenager's highlight reel, and the giddiness of Open Your Heart comes through in ostensibly meaningless slogans like "I wanna see you write a love song!/ I wanna see you go down!/ I wanna see you when you try so hard!/ I wanna see you when you turn it around!" Compare it to the only lyric of Leave Home's opener "If You Leave…": "I would die."
While there's a surface shift in attitude, Open Your Heart shares Leave Home's uncanny ability to balance reverence and irreverence, enthusiasm, and expertise, treating the last four decades of rock music like an amusement park rather than a museum. "Country Song" isn't even the one song on Open Your Heart deserving of that title (that would be "Candy"), but it shows how their minds work. A gummy tremolo riff, whining pedal steel, and an atypical waltz beat are the raw ingredients, but through the Men's artistic prism, it becomes something akin to a Southern bar band saying "fuck it" and letting their freak flag fly for a lengthy last-call jam. Likewise, is the title of "Presence" an indication that they're trying out the sort of loose, blues-prog of that particular Led Zeppelin album? With its patient, patient build and tamboura-ish drone, maybe it is, but like most of Open Your Heart, the referential recognition is a bonus rather than the end result.
Of course, the question with Open Your Heart is how it can manage to be such a thrill despite conceivably doing nothing actually new. Not to demystify what the Men do here or downplay the artistry, but these guys strike me as fixers and problem solvers. I hear a band analyzing modes that have just become tired and stodgy and delivering them back running smoother than ever. Liked the coed ragers from the last Fucked Up album, but wish it wasn’t neutered by thousands of overdubs? Have a blast with the all-id caterwaul of "Animal". Wish krautrock ditched the metronomic straitjacket and actually rocked? There’s "Oscillation", which hums more like a motorbike than a motorik, punctuated with blasts of pure MC5 ruckus. Want *Isn't Anything-*styled shoegaze with a backbone? An SST throwback without the razor-thin production? Alt-country without having to deal with Deer Tick's obnoxiousness? Enjoy the midrecord trifecta of "Please Don’t Go Away", the title track, and "Candy".
It isn't diversity for diversity's sake, though-- Open Your Heart is smartly sequenced to metabolize genre and morph like a masterful DJ mix, subtly rationing out its true peaks even while seemingly going full-throttle throughout. After the 1-2 headbutt of "Turn It Around" and "Animal", "Country Song" provides a momentary breather and also a swooning leadup to the Men at their most gorgeous and overwhelming, the tail end of which has "Please Don't Go Away" ushering in Open Your Heart's most traditionalist stretch. But just when it feels like Side B is going to be the Men's straight-up indie rock record, they burn that bridge with the willfully destructive two and a half minutes of "Cube", which then builds another one towards the LP's bright and expansive closers. And while "Ex-Dreams" doesn't overtly sound like a curtain call, there are two points during Open Your Heart's finale where everything drops out but a steady, crowd-pleasing drum break and you can all but imagine Perro happily lending the listener a chance to give themselves a round of applause for being such a good audience.
We haven't talked much about what the Men actually say on Open Your Heart-- about half of its 10 songs are instrumentals or something close. To get to its lyrical center, you'll have to go through "Candy", the one I imagine many might consider the dud or at least the outlier on account of foregrounding acoustic guitars. On the toast-worthy chorus, Perro sings "When I hear the radio play/ I don't care that it's not me." Around the same time I stared hearing "Candy", many of my colleagues were pushing "Radio" as the true standout on Lana Del Rey's Born to Die, a song that uses hearing oneself on the airwaves as a means of self-validation and smiting one's enemies. That sort of thing can only help "Candy" to be misread as being another in a long line of "Left of the Dial"-type, anti-mainstream indie rock lectures-- that its drunk-country shamble recalls the Replacements doesn't hurt either.
But when you consider the lyrics that come immediately after-- "Remember the days I'd shout anything for you to see me/ I could never sing now my voice it rings.../ I just quit my job/ now I can stay out all night long"-- it's clear that like most of Open Your Heart, it's not at all angry and, in fact, quite content. All four members of the Men are at the border of 30, an age where you have enough critical distance from your youth and life experience to really start to figure out what success means to you. If I read "Candy" correctly, it's about being able to make a living off this thing while being a very loud band with no radio prospects whatsoever on a boutique label: the rewards seem modest by most standards, but once achieved it means everything, the sort of self-sufficiency that's inspired indie bands to form since forever.
Before Leave Home became their first widely available LP, the Men's recorded output consisted mostly of self-made cassettes that they recently gave away for free through their website. They had to play a little rough if they wanted to be heard. A year later, Open Your Heart is the sort of record that proves while pain and loss are often viewed as great art's true catalysts, bands like the Men can be inspired by the sort of confidence born of the bills being paid and the boss no longer breathing down their necks. And they're passing on the goodwill to everyone who made it possible: if you bought their t-shirt, came to their show, raved about Leave Home on your Tumblr, or seek to carry on tradition by starting your own band, Open Your Heart is the Men thanking you in the best way possible.
