So far this year, I've noticed two recurring themes in the albums reviewed on this site: 1) A sort of sonic irony, in which the band's sound plays traitor to the lyrics' spoken emotions*, and 2) Gender ambiguity**. The Hungarian Suicide Songbook, the third release by Seattle's Man Plus, is just continuing those trends.
Well, small lie. "Man Plus" actually not a reference to their supermacho but to a sci-fi novel I know nothing about. Maybe if I actually picked up the book this wouldn't seem as true, but just based on the whole sci-fi thing I'd say that's pretty fitting. Putting on my headphones to this album is not unlike putting on a space helmet and embarking on an extraterrestrial voyage, someplace distant, someplace isolated someplace like...the eighties? These songs definitely play with the far and futuristic, but like some sort of new new wave, they're also flooded with retro flashing synth, ripping guitars, and beats as big as Whitney Houston's hair.
But like Whitney Houston (and her hair), the seemingly happy-go-lucky ditties of Man Plus are full of a lot of pain and a lot of drugs. I should've guessed as much about an album called The Hungarian Suicide Songbook, but with tunes catchier than cereal jingles and synth lines straight out of a toy box, one tends to forget those little details. By "What I Like About Love," a sing-songy melody tells us that "What I like about rainy days is standing outside and watching the blood erase." Me too! So that's what happens in Seattle...
Many songs start off with chirpy, goofy synth bits à la Napoleon Dynamite but evolve into a monstrous, raging insurgency of vocals and guitar, à la The Hulk. The vocals of Jared Mills can flip like a switch from cold and detached near-drones to the angst-ridden wails of "Down At My Place," where more of the band joins in to chime, And all you wanted was to die. "The Bill Collector Knocks Thrice" starts off sounding like the perfect song to cruise to in the summer, and ends with the line You had better get out of my life over and over again. "My Kind Of People" choruses bluntly, If you're down all the time, you're my kind of people. After letting my emotions sink just far enough, I try to recover some self-esteem when in the final track ("I've Always Been A Loser") I'm sweetly reminded, Don't forget you're still the fat kid. No one wants to jump your bones.
But don't be fooled. Although they repeat right off the bat Every day gets a little worse, every day gets a little worse ("Kids Gone Bad"), the same cannot be said about their songs. In fact, for all the album's creepy, downright disturbing lyrical inspirations, the bouncy, even cheesy melodies increase only to make this so much more haunting, much like the way Ellen Mills' soft, wafting vocals add not sweetness to the songs but instead the ghostly effect of an angel trapped in the dark. And that, in a sick way, actually makes the cleverness of this album strikingly poignant. Song after song, it almost seems to dangle the distance of innocence in front of all your desperation. Rather than coming off as excessively histrionic or, well, emo, The Hungarian Suicide Songbook is made like the best of villains: more than enough charm to win you over, but inevitably a broken nature that still just can't help but pull you to the dark.