Someone once pointed out that what makes Ringo so great is that he’s always been the world’s biggest Beatles fan. So that would make me basically the Ringo of Mannequin Men. When I joined the band a few years back I had already been following them for a long time, ever since I was booked to DJ a party they were playing some time before their 2006 debut Showbiz Witch. Their set lasted all of fifteen minutes and every one of their amps blew up at some point during it. For me it was love at first sight.

Those early performances earned the band a reputation as the rowdiest in Chicago, but even as early as 2007′s Fresh Rot they were already working hard to prove that they were much, much more than that. I joined the group in 2008 after the original bassist, Rick Berger, moved away (I got asked because they knew I knew all of their songs) and the new material they taught me was just breathtakingly good. The songs were songs. You wanted to put them on repeat and learn all of the words.

When Lose Your Illusion, Too came out in 2009 a respectable number of people (maybe not as many as our label would have liked) felt the same way about them. We got good reviews in Vice and the New Yorker. Little kids put the songs in videos they made for YouTube. Last year Hozac put out our single, “Hobby Girl,” and a few more people liked that one. It was very cool.

Speaking not only as a member of the band but also as a fan I have to say that this new record has to be the band’s strongest effort yet, and the one that best reflects the talents of the people I play music with. A lot of hard work went into it and I think it shows. Leading up to recording it we wrote and threw away probably as many songs as we kept. Then we practiced our asses off on the remaining ones and went up to Benton Harbor, Michigan where Bill Skibbe and Jessica Ruffins at Key Club Recording Company put a bunch of nice mics in front of us and let us go. Aside from vocals and a handful of overdubs what you’re hearing is Mannequin Men live in the studio, with no headphones and all kinds of amp bleed all over the place. There’s no Pro Tools editing, no punch-ins or cosmetic touch-ups to cover anything up.

I don’t think the songs would be improved by any studio tricks. Kevin Kujawa and Seth Bohn have turned out to be two of the best composers of vocal melodies around. Ethan D’Ercole blows our minds every time he comes up with a new guitar line. When that’s what you’re working with, how much is a string section or something really going to add?

You might be tempted to call Mannequin Men our “mature” record. And that’s fine. It’s a fact that we are getting older every day. Besides if a band’s together for eight years and it doesn’t mature there’s probably something wrong, unless you’re talking about the Ramones. So what if it’s a cliche? Self-titled records are a cliche. Being in a band’s a cliche. So is turning 30. If you can’t embrace the right cliches odds are you’re missing out on some of life’s better things.
–Miles Raymer, bassist

 

http://youtu.be/0e41maddi-Y