MEN Talk About Bodies

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Author: Daniel Horowitz

MEN’s debut album “Talk About Body” is a genre- and gender-bending extravaganza. The album packages unashamed gender politics with funky guitar rhythms and dance beats in a counterattack on the contemporary trend of mindless dance music.

Although MEN largely sacrifices lyrical subtlety and complexity for political polemic, “Talk About Body” serves as an accessible induction into gender issues for the uninformed.

On their website menmakemusic.com, MEN describes themselves as “a Brooklyn-based band and art/performance collective …  [who] focus on the energy of live performance and radical potential of dance music.”

Founded by Le Tigre’s JD Samson, MEN is somewhat of a super-group, consisting of members from Le Tigre, Ladybug Transistor and Hirsute.

“JD and Hirsute members Michael [O’Neill] and Ginger [Brooks Takahashi] now comprise the core of MEN, with Johanna [Fateman, Le Tigre member and co-founder of MEN] and artist Emily Roysdon contributing as writers, consultants, and producers,” their website also states.

MEN raise gender awareness with songs like “Take Your Shirt Off,” a trans-anthem that directly addresses the troubling feeling of not being able to conform to the gender binary and “Credit Card Babie$,” a sarcastic menu of queer alternatives to procreation.

“Boom Boom Boom” is the most political song on the album, with a blatant anti-war message that somehow doesn’t ruin the song’s catchiness or danceability.

“Talk About Body” is curiously accessible for an album whose themes are usually neglected in the mainstream.

It may be too much to hope that MEN receives exposure in clubs or at parties — their songs are sufficiently entertaining but probably too controversial for the majority of clubbers (except perhaps those at Tiger Heat) — but anyone looking for a well-crafted album that merges energetic beats and vitriolic, politically charged lyrics has found it with “Talk About Body.”

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