Welcome to MUSIC JUSTICE—Manhattan Murder Mystery

Hello dear readers,

Maybe you've noticed—many of the posts on this blog, particularly those by a particular, hyperlink-happy blogger, have little to nothing to do with food, focusing rather on the fashionable attire of the day. I recently asked Ben about this apparently ego-bloating habit of his, and he pointed out that much of our interest with food and food justice revolves around its creation, manufacture, development, etc. and that, naturally, fashion is subject to these mechanisms as well—ultimately, the production of food and the production of clothing are kind of the same thing.

While this may be a little bit farther afield, it seems to me that music is in a not-unrelated situation. Local musicians increasingly require local, grassroots support to create their work. More and more bands are signing with local labels, having community members hand-craft their art, crowdsourcing their funding, and obviously, playing at local houses, bars, clubs, and related venues. Music rises through the community in which it's born, and for this reason it is important and relevant to our cause.*

So this is post number one of what should be a recurring column, highlighting releases by local musicians. By local, I primarily mean Los Angeles, and even what might be termed NELA, an area which, by my definition, includes something like Eagle Rock, Highland Park, Los Feliz, and perennial musical hotbeds Silver Lake and Echo Park. "Local" will probably expand to include my own hometown of Portland, Ore., where the music grows on the coniferous trees and everyone's a DJ. Who knows, it may even expand to include music from the hometowns of some of our other residents. . . But probably not.

Up first, Los Angeles drunk-punk underdogs MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY!

A little backstory on how I discovered this fantastic group: I'm the current station manager at Occidental's radio station, KOXY. It's a pretty sweet gig, no bid deal. Anyway, I went into the office this summer to find an unusually large stack of what I assumed would be more of the terrible CDs we receive on a weekly basis, made by bands with enough pocket cash to skirt the quality-screening process of the record industry. One package, however, caught my eye. It included a cover letter from a guy named Mateo, in which he explained that, despite knowing nothing about business, having heard that the record industry was failing, and having terrible social skills, he had spontaneously started up a record label—"The World's Greatest Record Label In The World"—based on his faith in two bands. One of these was Manhattan Murder Mystery.

With an endorsement like that, I felt I had to at least give this crappy-looking CD-R (Who uses Chicago anymore?) a chance. I'm so glad I did: MMM are fronted by a shlubby, down-on-his-luck, lonely, lonely man who goes by the name of Matthew Teardrop, and who has probably lived a harder life than you. They make drunkenly tragic, rootsy punk rock in the vein of The Replacements, or, more recently, Titus Andronuicus, but they tinge it with hints of the ever-trendy post-punk of Joy Division and Gang Of Four. Teardrop's lyrics operate from a base of complete destitution—a characteristic line opens the title track of their recent record, Women House: "I was waiting for the bus to come/But the late-night bus never comes." Opener "Stadium Way" details the self-worth-destroying agony of applying endlessly for jobs, only to wait endlessly by the phone. "Arlington Cemetery," the record's quietest moment, chronicles the decline into dementia and death of a pair of grandparents over a lone strummed guitar and cooing from the band's all-female rhythm section, coming to the undying conclusion that death is coming for all of us, and it won't be long till you're buried next to the grandma who couldn't even remember you towards the end. Things are bleak down at the Women House.

It's fittingly self-deprecating that MMM named themselves after a Woody Allen movie—the pathos of Teardrop's songs can frequently come off as, well, pathetic. But if you're able to get onto his level, they're just the songs of a sad-sack dude who drinks too much cheap beer and plays the guitar to kill the time, and anyone who claims an inability to relate at least to some degree is lying. "Sancho", the most affecting song on the album, repeats various iterations on a single theme over harmonica and righteously palm-muted guitars: "I hope you save some thoughts for me/Years from now when you can't see/Oh, you used to lie in bed with me/Now I don't lie in bed with anybody." The loneliness and contempt conveyed by these four lines is played up by the mournful slide guitar that floats up between verses, and is hammered home over the course of the song's six minutes. Driven in by Teardrop's hoarse moan, the sentiment of the song catches the same way its simple melody does.

Listen to Manhattan Murder Mystery here, and check them out live at their reportedly excellent and frequent live shows at the Satellite, where they've been known to hit the stage with upwards of six guitarists. Long live rock and roll.


-Gabriel

*Also, let's be real, I just want an excuse to bloat my own ego, as well.