Man Man
Carrot on Strings
SUB POP
When Captain Beefheart created his exhaustingly cluttered avant-garde epic Trout Mask Replica in 1969, he had to rest for a time and consider pop, melody, and the blues on follow-ups such as Lick My Decals Off, Baby and Clear Spot. The same, then, might be true for Man Man’s main man, lyricist-vocalist Honus Honus, after he made his initial Beefhearted trio of experimental wonder, 2004’s The Man in a Blue Turban with a Face, 2006’s Six Demon Bag, and 2008’s Rabbit Habits.
No one imagined that each Trout Mask Replica successor wouldn’t sound manic or fractured, just less so—and the same thing goes for Honus and his seventh album, Carrot on Strings. Take the wonky but sunshiny album opener, “Iguana.” You couldn’t confuse this bubbling track with Jelly Roll, Ariana Grande, or anything else topping the Billboard charts. And yet you wouldn’t deny that “Iguana” is chilled out and calm, more so than anything on Man Man’s last album, 2020’s Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between. The same can be said of the less-sunny but equally warm (yet also happily weird) “Tastes Like Metal” and its slithering upbeat brother, “Alibi.” Far from pop traditionalism and convenient verse-chorus structure, their melodies are readily apparent and scintillating.
That doesn’t mean that Man Man (I’m not sure who Honus has convinced to join him on 2024’s journey) isn’t capable of their usual mad experimental dips and tipsy percussive/lyrical interludes: the crabby “Cryptoad,” the oblong noir of “Mulholland Drive,” and “Mongolian Spot” all prove that Honus likes his music messily uneven and loud. Still, when Man Man fans look back at Carrot on Strings, they’ll remember how pretty and surprisingly bold it all sounded from the very first listen, rather than waiting for the floppy boot stomp to fall.
