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Man Down’s performance at Mick O’Shea’s was at once mellow and festive in a “bringing in the good times” of summer kind of way.
The band define themselves as “yacht rock” on their Facebook page; not having heard this term, and being a someone used to made-up genre names for new (and newer, and future) indie music, I mused this might be something like listening to Vampire Weekend with boat shoes and khaki shorts on. No. Several seconds on the internet later, I became more acquainted with the yacht rock revival of recent times. “Yacht rock” is apparently that smooth, groovy feeling-the-sun-on-your-face you might end up playing on a road trip. It’s a sound lodged deeper back into American rock past than what I’ve been listening to lately, which makes it even more interesting as reinvented in the present. A band member said he thinks they used “yacht rock” as a bit of a joke (not surprising, the genre itself having farcical origins), but that it’s probably the best description. I found that’s especially the case when you think of it as taking that California beach style across the country, dragging it through the Americana folk, all the way to the Chesapeake harbors; Man Down’s music feels a little less yuppie, and a little funkier, a little more Baltimore. A four-man horn section brings in even more “party.”With their hard-to-pinpoint sound, they make “yacht-rock” – whatever it is – fit nicely with Baltimore experimental soul-folk rock & roll jazzy pop…you get the idea – it’s a lot of things in one aural experience.
Frontman Vinnie mentioned to the audience the irony of the name “Man Down” for the current band. Back when the band was just three people – then five – they seemed to be always one man down at rehearsals. Over the years, one by one the band added saxophones and a trumpet, and ended up having the full sound it has now. It seems this was one of their best shows. The bar had such a social atmosphere [plus Irish charm abound] that I would strike up conversations with random people. I was talking to one group that was pretty impressed with the more complex sound, having seen them before at the same venue. I overheard someone else saying “you should’ve told me they were this good.” Maybe it was that everyone felt like drinking on that warm night, but people seemed to be having a great time partly enabled by the music.
Man Down played all original music and what I must say was a rocking cover of “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” (probably why they do it). The laid-back – but quirky – rock wasn’t so intricate as to require the audience’s silence and non-stop attention, which was good for pub that’s a social meeting place from Baltimore locals and a fair amount of students from the nearby Peabody Conservatory. They varied it up with some chill reggae and audience interaction that included improvised freestyle rap from audience-given topics and the auctioning off of a CD in song form.
Whether it was a sentimental song about San Francisco or random cute song about fishies, this show definitely had people leaving feeling warm inside and humming the tunes they just heard.*
*possibly partly the Guinness .
Man Down
Mick O’Shea’s Irish Pub
328 North Charles Street
4/2/10
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