OTHER MEN

Dear these guys, let’s kick it!


I went home to Oakland, CA a few weekends back. Before having dinner with my family, I downloaded about 90 songs from non-BRILLIANT-but-still-awesome MP3 blogs. I’m becoming more and more pleased with these things. They work as increasingly amphibious discovery tools. I say this because that night I wasn’t just looking for album leaks or new releases. I was looking for year-old boutique label electronica. I was looking for Carla Bruni, an ‘80’s era supermodel who now sings (and shreds) in French. And—as always—I was looking for Prince songs. Blogs have these things. Between Elbo.ws and Hypemachine I found about 90% of the stuff I was curious about. That’s what I mean by “amphibious”: Old-and-new are the new land-and-sea.

That doesn’t mean my favorite discovery that Sunday was old. Quite the contrary, the track that sent me spinning is Rob Crow’s newest thing, which happens to be out now. It’s called Other Men. It’s the best new math rock I’ve heard in a while. If you’ve been wondering why Nave seems recomposed lately, it’s because I played him the track “False Positives” (BRILLIANTMP3 below). His face melted off and we had to recompose it.

Mr. Crow seems like a cool dude. He writes all the songs in Pinback. He played on The Ladies record (with Zach Hill), one of my favorites of last year. He does a zillion other projects a year that I can’t keep up with but want to. He has fan sites! There is video somewhere of him dancing at a Tera Melos show, front and center and holding a six pack. (I'm pretty sure you can look that up by Googling “definition of street cred.”)

I don’t know much about Other Men. I know the album came out March 20 on Mr. Crow’s label, Robcore. He plays bass and sings.

One thing I’m certain of is that Other Men sounds like Faraquet. Coming from me, that’s about as high as praise gets. It is not a comparison that will ever bother me. Faraquet was more of a watershed moment in my life than just another cool band. Like Other Men, Faraquet featured three prodigal musicians making ambitious—and generally accessible—music. I don’t remember my first experience with Faraquet (I think it was an Epitonic thing), but I remember listening over and over again, trying to rationalize all the riffs and notes and melodies. I’m posting an extra-BRILLIANT Faraquet MP3 below. Dust off your worship robes, pagans!

I feel reassured that music this technical is a genre that isn’t quite a “dirty word”: that genre is math rock. (A “dirty word” genre might be “nu-metal,” or “screamo.”) I guess genres are sort of personal, but that doesn't change the fact that I've found math rock to facilitate a lot of invention. At times Mr. Crow sounds a little like a weirder Neil Young (and something about the effects on his voice remind me of the Autolux guy). Which is to say he has a spectacular and confident voice, a voice that sounds greater and more confident over atypical (i.e. math-y) arrangements. And these Other Men guys rock to a strange beat. I recently wrote 200 words on Tera Melos (also math rock impresarios, though more circus-core than most) for Metal Hammer (which I’m pretty sure MH won’t use). I related Tera Melos’ music to video game music. That’s not much of a stretch if you listen to how complex a lot of video game composition is. The same analogy applies to Other Men: there’s a distinctive 8-bit feel that sounds fantastic when attempted by dexterous humans limited by muscles and synapses and stringed-instruments and band practice.

When the computers finally develop feelings and start forming bands and have no more use for humans, Other Men will be taken prisoner just like the rest of us. But instead of being turned into fuel and robot pâté like everyone else, Other Men will probably be kept alive to perform at computer comedy roasts and cocktail parties. Which will make them our only hope for infiltration and collusion.

I already treat bands this good as if they’re an only hope, so this isn’t much of a stretch for me.




Right click-and-save to download “False Positives,” from the album Wake Up Swimming by Other Men.


Right click-and-save to download “Uhhhh...,” from the album Wake Up Swimming by Other Men. Good grief this song rips!


Right click-and-save to download “Cut Self Not,” from the album The View From This Tower by Faraquet.


Other Men on MYSPACE.
Other Men on LAST.FM.
Other Men on WIKIPEDIA.
Other Men on HYPEMACHINE.
Other Men on ELBO.WS.
Support Other Men’s self-run/named LABEL.