Echo echo: Man Man's Honus Honus

Honus Honus, lead singer of Philadelphia’s Man Man, has fond memories of the last time he played The Black Cat about six years ago. He says the band showed up to a mostly empty room and an opening act gone AWOL. Undaunted, Man Man took the stage and played two identical sets, pausing only to change outfits. Though history is unlikely to repeat itself tonight, it’s this cavalier unpredictability (and various flying instruments) that make every Man Man show an impossible act to follow. Honus spoke with The A.V. Club about his band’s most recent album, why he’ll never play an apple onstage again, and the sadness of a werewolf romance.

The A.V. Club: Your current tour finds Man Man supporting Gogol Bordello, and you recently did a high-profile stint opening for Modest Mouse. Is playing before such established bands a challenge?

Honus Honus: With the Modest Mouse thing … we were lucky. We like playing with bands that are doing their own thing and have cultivated their own audience. We’re talking about bands that have been at it for a long time, and people have learned the language they’re speaking and follow along. But I like it when you’re forced to deal with bands that are different sounding. Now with this tour with Cursive [laughs] … this is going to be interesting. When the Cursive thing came up, I never had really listened to them. I mean, I will be soon. But I really liked the idea behind it because whenever I tell anyone we’re touring with them, people just say “oh….”

AVC: How does your music translate to the stage?

HH: I think if anything, the energy and vitality behind our live shows … we all kind of feel that sometimes it can overwhelm the arrangements of the songs. There’s a lot of thought in how we put these songs together. We’re not just up there banging on shit. Well, when you get caught in the moment of it, yes—but still.

AVC: Name one inanimate object that you tried to use as an instrument but didn’t work out.

HH: Pretzels, or an apple. I remember trying to balance an apple off of the snare drum and it just ricocheted back and nailed one of the guys in the head. He wasn’t all too happy because he thought I did it intentionally, but I wish I had that kind of precision. 

AVC: You mentioned a dichotomy that exists between the chaotic elements of Man Man’s sound and an emotional vulnerability, something even more pronounced on last year's Rabbit Habits. As a songwriter, have you developed parameters for what you’d consider a Man Man song?

HH: I really like being as straightforward as possible, but also balancing it with abstract imagery. The way I feel is that we all know the world is going to shit, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a heart in the middle of it—for better or worse. I don’t necessarily like laying it all out there because I feel like a perfect pop song is one that is personal yet objective, or open-ended enough to relate to everyone somewhat. Like in a great Pavement song, your first reaction is to think, “What the hell is he singing about?” But at the same time it feels really personal.

AVC: It’s funny you bring up Pavement because Stephen Malkmus recently said in an interview that a band develops something of a signature by its fourth song. Could you speculate as to what Man Man’s signature might look like on its next album?

HH: Who knows? It might be a really pretty record or it might be a really ugly record—it is definitely not going to be one or the other. [Laughs.] We’re basically taking the whole summer and holing up in Philly to work on the next record. After we record it, we’ll be taking it out on the road in the fall and hopefully have it out by next spring. We have a lot of songs to work with. We try to write down-tempo and mellow songs but with this band—and this is a good thing—it’s kind of like that family dog that you know mauled someone once. You’re calm when you’re petting it, but you’re not going to turn your back on it.

AVC: Speaking of vicious animals, tell me about the video for “Rabbit Habits,” which stars Saturday Night Live’s Fred Armisen, Knocked Up’s Charlyne Yi, and Freaks And Geeks’ Martin Starr. I imagine a werewolf love story was not what you envisioned when you wrote the song.

HH: It wasn’t. The subject matter of the song is very close to my heart, and I was afraid that by doing a somewhat playful video it might undermine what the song’s about. Initially, I thought that we could just do a video that rolled with the vibe of the song. But then I thought, "Why do that? Let’s do something that seems lighthearted—but, when you look at it, it’s not totally."

AVC: How involved were you in the making of it?

HH: I wanted to do a video with Charlyne almost two years ago, but the ideas that I had ending up not happening. I asked her if she wanted to be a werewolf, and we just ran from there. She got Fred on board and when Fred and Charlyne were on board, we got Martin. I joke with Martin because you never actually see his face, and he had to stay in that terribly uncomfortable costume. After two hours, he was so pissed off at me, but he did it and it was awesome.

AVC: How did it turn out?

HH: When I showed the video to my bandmates for the first time, Chang said, “Congratulations! You made a happy ending!” But is it really? One of the characters has totally eviscerated and killed someone, and the only way this girl can have a relationship with this guy is if she puts a leash on him. How is that a happy ending?