57. Man Man - Six Demon Bag (2006)

I recently was talking to my colleague and brother epileptic peat about "breakup albums."Sometimes breakup albums are not planned and happen out of random occurrence. Such is the case when I went home for Christmas in 2006. My car does not have a cd player rather an old tape deck (which is of now broken) because I was really into making tapes for people, I had prepared an extensive rack of new music to listen to on my holiday visit. Unfortunately, I left that rack on my table in my apartment and went home with only one tape I was listening to that morning; Man Man - Six Demon Bag. So it goes, my Christmas break was also the time when I planned on meeting up with this girl who lived in New York. Well call her Amanda Valentine. The affair lasted a few months but was destined to go south at any moment. If it did not happen during that Christmas break It would of happened when I or her visited each other next. Whatever the case I did alot of slow drives in my car that Christmas break with Six Demon Bag playing on repeat. If I had planned a break up album before, Six Demon Bag would not be at the top of my list as my automatic picks: Magnetic Fields: 69 love songs, Devotchka: How It Ends, Explosions In the Sky: Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place . Six Demon Bag is weird and fucked. Great break up albums are comforting yet allow some catharsis; they are a shoulder to weep. They are sorrowful and reflective. Six Demon Bag is a dark cabaret filled with strange chanting and junkyard instruments. It is goofy as fuck but it is also sorrowful. I realized that winter that six demon Bag had a central thread of anger and resentment which binds every song together. Beneath the clanging and yelping was a breakup album. Maybe it was just becasue ti was the only album i had. Whatever the case it became my anthem of lose making my experience feel like some amazing act in some shitty play. After that Christmas break, I threw that tape into the trunk of my car. It wasn't until a year later my tape deck broke thus rendering all of my hard work int he art of analog useless. Break up albums are comforting at the time, but unnecessary once the feeling of anguish and regret pass. I haven't listened to Six Demon Bag since last Christmas and only recently put the album on my Ipod. It shouldn't be surprising how familiar and comforting the album is. Form a personal standpoint every emotion and thought from that particular Christmas has been preserved beneath the waves of sound. Preserved in the sense that it is like watching a movie, where you are detached from the whole experience and look upon it with an emotionless judgment. Wow that was a pretty fucked up time. I haven't thought about that in awhile. And once the album ends, the movie ends and you get up from your seat and go home.




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