MEN | Talk About Body

Most Likely To: pack a lot of ideas into a three-minute dance track.

Just how did JD Samson become a leader of MEN? Samson originally made her name as a member of Le Tigre, Kathleen Hanna’s post-Bikini Kill project. With Le Tigre on seemingly permanent hiatus, Samson joined forces with Le Tigre’s Joanna Fateman to form MEN as a DJ project. Samson may be the only woman in rock who sports facial hair, so when she formed Hirsute with multi-faceted performers Michael O’Neill (Ladybug Transistor) and Ginger Brooks Takahashi (Mirah collaborator, and co-founder of LTTR) and Emily Royston, the name was presumably a playful nod to her mustache. Eventually Hirsute morphed into MEN with Fatemen and Royston taking on greatly reduced roles.

Although MEN counts furthering “the radical potential of dance music” among its aims, at its core Talk About Body is full of fun-loving, upbeat songs that mine the artsy, new wave synthetic beats of the early 1980s. “Boom Boom Boom,” which was originally performed by Hirsute, would not sound out of place on Devo’s Freedom of Choice (1980).

Expecting Samson to sound masculine, based on her appearance, would be a mistake. Samson and Takahashi’s overtly female vocals are one of the album’s strong points, but the difference between Samson’s voice and appearance is just not that important once Talk About Body gets going. Maybe that’s the point.

However, if MEN is purposefully aiming to go beyond the limits traditionally inscribed by gender (easy peasy, right?), then they don’t quite succeed. Many of the songs (“Credit Card Babie$,” “Who Am I to Feel So Free”) bluntly address gender and queer politics. The lyrics may be a bit heavy-handed at times, as on “Take Your Shirt Off”: “These in-between moments call for in-between souls / For our in-between T-shirts and our in-between holes.”

While MEN’s androgynous appearance is gutsy and likely to start some “talk about body,” it’s no more radical than Mark Mothersbaugh parading around as Booji Boy. Devo used music to communicate about issues which were important to their age, such as the threat of nuclear war, just as MEN use their music as a platform for their own political agenda. And much like Devo, it is likely that if MEN’s music endures that it will be remembered for the catchy beats and not the underlying message.

Watch the video for “Off Our Backs” from MEN: