Thursday 4 July 2013

Top 50 of 2012: No.38: The Men - Open Your Heart (Sacred Bones)


There’s a fine line between showing your influences and plagiarism, The Men have just shat all over that line, opening track ‘Turn It Around’ kicks off with a very familiar Stiff Little Fingers riff and throughout the album, there are huge nods to the Buzzcocks, Rolling Stones, Spritiualized, Sonic Youth and more, is this a bad thing? Not really it just sounds like the greatest mixtape ever made, and while elements are extremely similar, The Men do not simply re-hash another bands songs, rather they just slam it into their own music and create something of their own with it. It’s an argument I’ve had with friends before, what would you prefer? A band who sound completely original but the songs are awful, or a band that wears it’s influences on its sleeve but have great songs, I know which side I go with and that’s why The Men make the Top 50 this year. So go listen to your Alt-J or whatever, I’ll be happily rocking out to the fuzzed up multi-layered infliarism of The Men. #infliarism (you heard it here first)
8/10

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