Man Man's follow-up to 2004's The Man in a Blue Turban With a Face sounds like a more refined version of the rag-tag group, but is still thankfully rough around the edges. For the first-time listener, the thickly layered vocals, achieved by tempering the growls of Honus Honus with supporting falsetto, is probably the first thing noticeable about Man Man. Yet, setting the stage for a tongue-in-cheek mess of songs, opening track "Feathers" is deceptively restrained. This act is soon dropped as the shouts of 'Fee Fi Fo Fum' resonate on "Engwish Bwudd," and the listeners are finally let in on the joke.
What follows is a collection of tracks that mix old world flair with a gruff attitude - a sound totally unique to Man Man. This is part of the charm of Six Demon Bag; the listener must make the same dedication in listening to the album as Man Man put into recording it. This is not to say their sound is avant garde or even terribly experimental. Still, the songs seem to be written in a very abstract way - yet without sounding as if they consciously did this. Directly because of this, throw-away tracks such as "Young Einstein on the Beach," "Hot Bat," and "Fishstick Gumbo" aren't quite as distracting as they would be on most other albums. Instead, the album can be taken in as a whole, while still producing a few standout tracks, such as "Black Mission Goggles," that will be stuck in listeners' heads long after they are welcome.
THE HAPS: Man Man delivers a very unique sound that they dedicated themselves to completely - but when reaching the half-way mark, listeners will begin asking themselves whether they had already heard the same songs a few tracks ago.
