Man Is Man

I went to see Man Is Man at Hideout on a Thursday. The week before Christa's new band played to an noisy Whistler. I love Whistler, but more than a few times it devolves into a hipster cafeteria without the food. I can hear people chatting over the performer. For that night it was just her with autoharp and the cello player. At the Hideout with a crowd more attentive, less chatty there was a full band. It was clear that the mid-porous crowd was there for her. I arrived somewhere in the second or third song. This was supposed to be a record release thing but I do not recall anything at the merch table. Those Birds Will Eat Us is the debut CD. But I could not get it and so my impressions will be sparked by the live show...my memory of it, and the youtube videos she posts up. There are only so many people that can make sad, dark places sound as cool as Man Is Man. Very few have that cathartic payoff sustained. Man Is Man walks as your tour guide through the darker rooms of the mind, the interior castle you refuse to enter. And it's not about glamming up the sadness, to make it worse but the survival of it. Perhaps this is a sentiment that I carry over from her Puerto Muerto days, there is an affinity to the primitive, to what's on the frontier. Music for the lonely campfire, the log cabin. So perhaps it's no wonder that Christa would write about animals. Nick Cave weeps but not for very long and neither does Christa. I think that's because she closes that back door to the feeling of vulnerability. And that's the enduring strength.

Zig