Brooklyn’s The Men played Great Scott last Sunday night as they begin their tour to promote the new record Tomorrow’s Hits, which was released yesterday.  I spoke to keyboardist Mark Perro last week, which you can read here.

For the bands that preceded them, there was the darkened neon “Tomorrow’s Hits” sign that you can see on their new album’s cover. On the first note the band played after the count-in, it lit up, the lights went off and they went for it as punk bands are wont to do.

Their last album New Moon was extremely folk-inspired, relying much more on acoustic guitars, pedal steal guitars, and piano than the rest of their material. While some of the set visited that era, the songs were unrecognizable. Tomorrow’s Hits relies on a hard blues sound which was captured much more, however the keys were almost inaudible at times and so the show came off sounding much like a much earlier, fiercer version of themselves.

Not that The Men’s songs are especially lyric-heavy, but the songs played that night were largely instrumental choices, the vocals very sparse when they did show up between repeating tight guitar riffs and solos. This also showed between songs, where there was no audience interaction save for a couple of thank yous here and there.

I met several fans of theirs who had seen them before in Boston and had been excited about this show, but they still had trouble identifying a song or knowing which member was who. This struck me as the kind of band that they are: everyone says it’s “about the music,” but this seems like a case where it’s the truth. There was never a doubt that they were there because they had a job to do and they were going to doing it, but the half-full dance floor warmed up immediately in spite, or maybe because, of it.  Everything was well rehearsed and no one on stage was played up or down by anyone else. What was most enjoyable was seeing the members trade off songs. In a band that’s achieved a bit of success as of late, it’s refreshing that there didn’t seem to be an ego, but a reverence for each others’ music. The styles of the songs stayed the same while they switched off, but the songwriting and vocal styles, of course, changed.

The Men could benefit quite a bit from a bit of banter–it’s clear that there’s a good humor and respect between them.  Or acknowledging a new song or the album, or something to tie the audience into the show.  The takeaway feeling was that while everyone clearly took note of the band, did they notice the audience?

As I said, they had a job to do and did it tightly.  There are myriad reasons why a band doesn’t address an audience, and if that’s the one thing I find myself picking at, I’d say that it was a damn good show.