Been offline for a while due to moving house but rest assured I'm back with a vengeance now folks, and good job too cos they're been a shitload of cracking new releases stealth bombing the musical landscape over the last few weeks - I'm gonna try and wax lyrical about all of 'em in due course but before we go any further let's collectively slobber over the reassuringly fantastic newbie from The Men. I hailed these dudes as nothing less than the saviours of Rock 'n' Roll back in 2012 when I singled out their splunderous masterpiece 'Open Your Heart' as Album of the Year and they've gone from strength to strength in the five years since their inception, dropping a stellar album every Spring and touring their balls off in toilet venues the world over to bring their stonking hybrid of surf rock, barroom country and slammin' garage punk to the masses. 'Tomorrow's Hits' keeps the blood flowing rather than offering a radical new direction but these guys know their strengths well enough to play to them and in the wake of last year's slightly overlong 'New Moon' they've locked down for a faultless eight song set that ticks all the boxes for long term fans whilst showcasing a few new colours for 2014. The grizzled country rock element of their music came to the forefront on the last record and is every present here on the slide guitar 'n' piano strut of 'Sleepless' but they've come strapped with the sax this time and the ballsy barroom stomp of 'Another Night' sounds like early E Street Band laced with piss stained punk rock. In fact you can imagine them picking up tips from the second hand record racks, leafing through the cream of the early 70s for some satisfyingly dirty 'n' sweaty slabs of earnest guitar rock, coming off like a grimy cocktail of Mudhoney and Dylan/The Band on the slurred wonder of 'Different Days' and the surprisingly chirpy 'You Get What You Give' - their approach isn't to pilfer or imitate but rather to channel the no frills pragmatism of the era when fans could realistically expect at least one killer LP a year and no whining about the pressures of touring. And this is why these guys are so important kids - starting a band shouldn't be about spending months wanking around in the studio, it should be about bashing your ideas out while they're still fresh and then taking that shit to the people before it goes cold. The first thing I'm thinking every time I hear a new record from these dudes is how much fucking fun I'm gonna have watching them wreck their equipment belting the whole thing out in a cheap and nasty live venue when they come to town - needless to say me and the missus have already bagged ourselves tix to check them out at La Flèche d'Or later this month (for the princely sum of 12 Euros a ticket I might add) and there's plenty here to bolster an already pulsating setlist. The single 'Pearly Gates' alone has the potential to rock the bollocks off a bronze donkey over six minutes of rollicking Beefheart meets 'Sticky Fingers' Stones and there's enough to satiate the appetites of their most grizzled fans nostalgic for their noise rock past but they prove that there's plenty more up their sleeve with the sun-soaked caress of 'Settle Me Down' which is mellow enough to calm a pack of angry gorillas. By the time the beefy riff of closer 'Going Down' splits your speakers you realise that they could have easily started the record with it and gone off in a totally different direction but that's the beauty of these boys - 'Tomorrow's Hits' is a snapshot of their headspace as things stand but give it six months and they'll probably have moved on to a whole new set of thrills. If there's one band worth devoting your life to at the moment, The Men are almost certainly it - their status as indie's most reliable flag bearers is still firmly intact and everything they do demands your undivided attention. Don't even think about missing out on this. I mean it.
Check out : The 'we haven't got a proper budget but we're gonna have fun anyway' promo for 'Pearly Gates'.
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