Divided we enthral

>> What does not kill Philadelphia’s
Man Man only makes them stronger

by JOHNSON CUMMINS

After they literally floored Montrealers at 2005’s Pop Montreal, and lightning struck a second time at last year’s Suoni Per Il Popolo festival, the incredible live show of Philadelphia freak-out band Man Man has nothing left to prove in this town. On record, the band prove to be quite the songsmiths, using inventive instrumentation while expertly obscuring any musical reference points. On stage, though, is where this band really shines—their sense of the theatrical and intrinsic passion for what they do keeps them well apart from the current crop of ho-hum bands clogging up the blogosphere. The Mirror rang up singer Honus Honus (aka Ryan Kattner) at his apartment in Philly.

Mirror: The live show and your recorded output almost seem like two different bands. Why has the band drawn that much of a dividing line?

Honus Honus: We put on a show, I guess, and we like to keep that separate from the records, but that kind of came out of necessity. On record, we’re concerned with the ebb and flow of the record, with the occasional curveball thrown in, and are really thinking about the trip of listening to the record as a whole, because that is where the most amount of people are going to hear you. The live thing is different, because we’ll let songs play into each other, because for years, we started as being the first of a four-band bill, and we only had 30 minutes to get our point across. By blurring the songs together and not having any breaks, you don’t have to hear anybody telling you to get the fuck off the stage.

M: Have you actually had people tell you to get the fuck off the stage?

HH: We played some shows with Arcade Fire when they were just breaking and we thought the shows were really great, despite being booed a couple of times, but after that, we started getting all of this hate mail from their fans that said we had no talent, couldn’t write songs, or people who just said that we ruined their night. I just wrote those people back saying, “Thanks for your opinion, I really appreciate it, and thanks to people like you, we will win this war in Iraq.”

M: You lost members of the band on the eve of recording your new record, and as a slap in the face, your label Ace Fu dropped the band once you finished recording. Was this disheartening, or did this help galvanize the vision of the band for you?

HH: Ironically, I have a much stronger band leaving

With Icy Demons and Dishwasher at
Club Lambi on Friday, March 16, 9 p.m., $15