Men I Trust

One Liner: Dreamy psych pop from two guys and a girl who apparently trusts them

Wikipedia Genre: Electropop, indie pop, dream pop
Home: Montreal, Canada

Poster Position: 17

Weekend One Only.

Thoughts:  A band with two sides.  If you crank up their last album, 2015's Headroom, you get a sort of indie R&B thing, like the music made by Creed's wife in both of the Creed movies.  Grooves, hand-claps, soulful singing - some Lisa Bonet shit.  See "Curious Fish" or "Break for Lovers."  But if you start with their top ten songs on Spotify, you hear all of the singles that have been released since that 2015 album, almost all of which are more popular.  And the overall sound with those is kind of psych indie - they use effects on the guitars and synths to make them do funky things that I associate with psych music like Tame Impala or Mac DeMarco. "Say, Can You Hear" has a bass-line and synth washy-style that reminds me of the Cure.  I absolutely like the newer stuff much better.

The band is two guys who met in high school and a singer/guitarist who they met later on.  Two albums, but as I mentioned above, nothing since 2015 except for singles that take their tunes in a different direction.  I think my favorite tune from that 2015 album is "Again (feat. Ghostly Kisses)" that has a haunting kind of sound that makes me think of some old school trip hop stuff.  But the more popular is the album opener, "Morse Code (feat. Odile & Geoffroy)" with just over 2 million streams.

Got that funky bassline - Brand New Heavies-sounding stuff - just a lively tune.  Sunny and ready to jam.  Feels like French people should be dancing to it, in an exaggerated fashion where their arms seem to stretch out longer than is permitted by science.  I also like when the bass disappears a few times in the song - cool trick to recapture attention.

Then I'll give you their most recent single, "Norton Commander (All We Need)," which already has 213k YouTube views and 426k Spotify streams, despite being released only two weeks ago.  Here is where you feel the Tame Impala flavors.

I wonder if a body shop can just add wood paneling to any car?  Like, could I get them to just slap some on the side of my 4Runner and rule Austin like a boss?  That song makes me want to relax straight through the earth's core.  Sooo mellow.

This article says that they made a conscious decision to stop releasing full albums and just go with the singles-only approach.  They also made a conscious decision to write and sing in English, despite French being their natural language.  They said that they find English easier to write in than French, because "in English the words are shorter."  Never did find a simple explanation for the band's name.

I'd go see this, depending on the competition for that time slot.  I love the bass work and the newer tracks have a mellow vibe that I think would be nice for an afternoon chill in the grass.