The Man in a Blue Turban with Face

Above New York and Philadelphia debris MAN MAN materializes, tender and nightmarish, fastening together Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Etta James, '80s pop and Iggy Pop; drawing on Soda Popinski, Mexican funeral marches, religious cults, bad luck, and the pervasive mythology of two-headed wolves and wrangling out something entirely else: peculiarly brilliant, acrobatic, unsettling, romantic, unpretentiously ordered. Accompanied on one song by a chorus of kindergartners, Man Man multiplies precise instrumentation and refined song structure by unusual rhythms and a thick, complex texture to produce a polished eclecticism unlike anything in our collective musical consciousness.