PHOTOS: DAVE PETTIT | It’s Wednesday night and you can barely move in the venue, slick sweat slithering down the wall as we try to make our way toward the front away from our initial spot that had our backs pressed against the bar. We have never seen the Barfly this packed, especially on a Wednesday. Everybody looks the part, dressed to the nines in the height of steam punk fashion—goggles a-plenty, Victorian button down shirts, and waistcoats of tweed and black cotton.
We’d been told that to fully understand TMTWNBBFN we had to see them live and, despite already loving our copy of the forthcoming album Not Your Typical Victorians and previous double A side “The Gin Song/Third Class Coffin,” we have to agree—these guys put on an insane show.
Never before has the sound in this place sounded so crisp, the vocals fluent over the din of riotous guitar and pounding drums. The sound engineer has done an amazing job for a space so small, and not a single one of Andy Heintz’s lyrics gets lost in the noise. Even the backing vox from guitarist Andrew O’Neill and bassist Marc Burrows is positively unmuddied and stabbingly punctuated throughout the set—”Not Your Typical Victorian” and “Brunel” being prime examples, made all the more powerful by the crowd joining in at all the right bits.
These guys have the energy and verbal wit of punk in its heyday, and while Crass are mentioned in their press release, we think they do themselves a disservice—the politics embedded in their songs are a lot easier to swallow, as opposed to the “jam it down your throats until you understand” technique of Steve Ignorant and Joy De Vivre.
There’s also a strong backbone of death and heavy metal, with a smattering of Tom Waits, which The Men jump between—sometimes mid song. They also know how to work a crowd, and tracks from previous albums are sung along to with an enthusiasm that you just don’t see in venues of this size.
To paraphrase the old maxim, writing about music is like dancing about architecture and, while we’d usually wholeheartedly disagree, it is impossible to capture just how much fun we had at this show in words. We bounced, we sang along, we got chatted up in the friendliest and least creepy way ever experienced—so go.
Find out where they’re playing on their official website, cancel all your plans and just go. They’re like an angry Chaz & Dave raised on a diet of Clash and Dead Kennedys. They’re like a fancy dress party where everybody’s made an effort and doesn’t care that they’re all wearing the same outfit. They’re like somebody took an iPod to the 1880s. They are The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing.
