REVIEW: The Hungarian Suicide Songbook by Man Plus (WA)

The Hungarian Suicide Songbook by Man Plus
new wave is back
read the review // buy the album on the band's site (also available on cdbaby)

El Nova Hustle by P.I.C
hip-hop fused with swing, soul, jazz, Latin, etc.
read the review // buy the album on cdbaby (also available on itunes, amazon, rhapsody, napster, etc.)

El Nova Hustle by P.I.C and The Hungarian Suicide Songbook by Man Plus are like mirror images of each other. Or maybe they're more like siblings, one of whom was abducted in the family cornfield by aliens and returned in a zombielike, mutated state, the other of whom spends his time watching the Food Network, but they still gather to play a nice game of Monopoly on the weekends.

Um.

What I mean is, I can't decide whether these albums are total opposites or actually brothers from another mother (or the same one, per the previous analogy). While their sounds are definitely different, both of them them have some irresistibly catchy songwriting that strangely mask darker themes. The lyrics of Man Plus deal with internal pain, the anguish of taking the wrong road out of emptiness. The lyrics of P.I.C sometimes deal with frustration with society's conformity and stereotypes. And yet while Man Plus' lyrics usually leave you with a portrait of the man mid-misery, P.I.C insists on ending with a charge, an insistence on change.

I think I wrote another blog like this on Band Marino and Matt and Isom's albums and how everything was reminding me of Radiohead. The truth is, I think everything's connected. If you look at ska (which most people don't), ska started in Jamaica melding calypso and traditional beats with what was coming in from American radio at the time--soul, jazz, rhythm and blues. That went on to influence punk, and that went on to sprout reggae, which in some ways went on to influence everything from jam bands to funk to certain styles of electronic music. You look at boogaloo (which most people don't--yeah, it's real), which started off fusing R&B and soul with Latin styles and rock and roll and inevitably went on to leave its mark in every one of those genres. My point is, I believe in being a music nomad. I can't call a single section of the record store home, because where do the borders of a sound lie? I love looking for the connections and similarities between the CDs I listen to, because I think they always exist.