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As the blogosphere’s embrace of recent releases by DeVotchka, Beirut, and Gogol Bordello demonstrates, the American indie scene is experiencing an unlikely craze for Eastern European Gypsy music. This Philadelphia group are one of the new community’s brightest lights, and their second full-length is a weird, raucous delight full of clanging percussion, woozy saxophone lines, and rowdy group vocals led by frontman (and apparent Tom Waits fan) Honus Honus. Like Gogol Bordello, Man Man exist in order to play live; their music is about tension and release, qualities that require the participation of an audience to achieve full expression. But they’ve gotten good at re-creating in the studio the sound of a dingy rock venue in full throb — “Spider Cider” seems to be emanating from several different directions at once. They’ve taken advantage of record making’s textural potential too: “Push the Eagle’s Stomach,” the best cut here, has funky machine beats that suggest Prince on holiday in Kyiv.
MAN MAN + COYOTE + BLACK HELICOPTER | T.T. the Bear’s Place | September 12 | 617.492.BEAR