★★★★★
MAN MAN - On Oni Pond
Album:
On Oni Pond
Artist: Man Man
Label: Anti-
Release Date: September 10, 2013
www.anti.com
BY JOHN B. MOORE
Philly's Man Man has never really been accused of making a stripped down record, but On Oni Pond, their fifth, is quite possibly the closest they will ever come to being considered de-cluttered...
- blurtonline.com
2013-10-03
★★★★★
?????????? Philadelphia indie rockers Man Man have always sought to push the envelope. With the release of their fifth full-length album, they do that by taking their music in a direction no one expected: the mainstream. To say that On Oni Pond is the band's most accessible work is putting it mildly. The band that had always worn its quirkiness on its sleeve has put its love of absurdity aside in favor of a sound that is more direct and meaningful...
- www.glidemagazine.com
2013-09-23
★★★★★
Man Man frontman Honus Honus (Ryan Kattner) has always had his heart firmly planted on his sleeve. On his band's fifth album, On Oni Pond, the experimental-rock showman sharpens his Frankenstein mash of genres down to a gleaming point and plunges it deep into his carotid artery. He now shares his self-destructive song-crafting duties with drummer Pow Pow (Christopher Powell), which lends tracks such as "Pink Wonton," "Pyramids" and "Fangs" a supplementary punch...
- filtermagazine.com
2013-09-20
★★★★★
"Every time she tries to find / the kind of love that won't leave her behind / she ends up feeling like some sort of / shadow on the wall," Man Man bandleader Honus Honus intones on "Fangs," a late-album track from the Philly band's latest release, On Oni Pond. The album, while the least noisy and frenetic of the band's output, is not short on the dark character studies Honus has been writing since 2004's The Man in a Blue Turban with Face...
- www.pastemagazine.com
2013-09-18
★★★★★
Every problem a band faces during its finite existence can be whittled down into two principle struggles. The first is the battle against the outside world, or more specifically, the battle to gain that initial recognition for itself amid a plethora of other upstarts and the jaded indifference such an overabundance engenders...
- www.tinymixtapes.com
2013-09-13
★★★★★
Like every Man Man album, On Oni Pond finds the wolfish Philadelphia crew to be more traditionally tuneful and less grating than the last time out. The obvious play is to acknowledge it as part of the ongoing maturation of Man Man, yet it always feels strange talking about "maturity" for a band that never sounded young. That isn't to say Man Man sounded old, as in tired and tame...
- pitchfork.com
2013-09-10
★★★★★
There's something weirdly delightful about the juxtaposition of Man Man frontman Honus Honus's gravelly, metallic voice with the ukulele lightness of songs like "Deep Cover" from On Oni Pond, the band's fifth studio album. "The heart is a motherfucker, I'm positive of that," Honus sings. This is a man who's not afraid to tell it like it is, or at least as he sees it, which in his mind is the same thing...
- consequenceofsound.net
2013-09-11
★★★★★
Dipping its toes into polished pop on 2011's Life Fantastic, Philadelphia indie act Man Man obviously found the water rejuvenating--with On Oni Pond, the band has been reborn as hook-focused, crossover experimentalists. It's no solemn baptism, however. Rather, the record is an enthusiastic belly flop into accessibility, a frolic in melodies, rhythms, and genres that aims for broader appeal while still indulging in the off-kilter inclinations that makes the group's music so delightfully...
- www.avclub.com
2013-09-10
★★★★★
Man Man's fifth album, On Oni Pond, boasts both a cleaner production style and more tightly constructed rhythms and melodies than the band's previous, more down-and-dirty efforts. While those albums felt like a series of unpredictable improvisations, each track on On Oni Pond seems too-carefully constructed and fine-tuned...
- www.slantmagazine.com
2013-09-07
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