{grate 3.5} Welcome to Man Man’s third carnival-rock spectacle, Rabbit
Habits, a finely honed blend of hobo weirdness and indie introspection from one
of
experimental outfits. The territory isn’t new — ringleader Honus Honus and his
band of bearded tricksters thoroughly explored these charming back alleys on
past release Six Demon Bag, but now they’ve ditched most of the percussive
bustle and noisy charades in favor of meticulously fat-free pop.
The show starts with the immediately bouncy “Mister Jung
Stuffed,” the feminine background vox and Honus’ cracking yelps still intact,
along with a tight bass/organ punch to keep the jam from getting too out of
hand. Then we’ve got “Hurly/Burly,” whose jittery helium-pitched chorus holds
back an otherwise inspired and eclectic marimba and guitar-lick frenzy. Onward
to a cartoon-montage intro leading into the character-driven track “The Ballad
of Butter Beans,” which concerns a first-person narrator chasing B.B. for her
own sinister ends. Also, a
funeral march finds its way into “Big Trouble,” a morose take on mundane living
through the eyes of a man/zombie lamenting his bad luck with girls. Slightly to
the band’s detriment, the tune never gets truly heartfelt because of their
preoccupation with weirdo shrieks and spaced-out sound effects.
But the minimal piano ballad “Doo Right” serves as an
interlude to creepier and ever-polished fare; for the rest of the voyage, Man
Man attempts nearly everything from makeshift kitchen-sink techno on “El
Azteca” to jauntily crafted nuggets like “Rabbit Habits” and the instant-single
strut of “Top Drawer,” a perfect entry point on the Man Man train. This sums up
Rabbit Habits perfectly in relation to group‘s other records: pick this one up
first to ease yourself with the crafted Tom Waits-lite stylistics, and then
move on to Six Demon Bag’s manic delivery for a taste of the harder stuff.
