Review & Track Premiere: Here Lies Man, You Will Know Nothing
[Click play above to stream ‘Taking the Blame’ from Here Lies Man’s You Will Know Nothing. Album is out June 15 via RidingEasy Records.]
This is a band ahead of their time. And like their foreboding moniker, Here Lies Man are waiting. They’re waiting for you, me and everybody else to catch on to what they’re doing, taking elements out of ’70s Afrobeat and repurposing them in a heavy psychedelic context. One hesitates to call them “neopsych” for the shoegazing that seems so prevalent in that movement, and because the Los Angeles-based core duo of drummer Geoff Mann (ex-Antibalas) and vocalist, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Marcos Garcia (also Antibalas) keep such a sense of tension even in the quiet spaces. Others have started to take note on both coasts. Philadelphia’s Ecstatic Vision — who’ve been around longer — have begun working Afrobeat rhythms into their sound, and San Diego’s Volcano will make their debut later this year with essentially a party version of what Here Lies Man did on their 2017 self-titled (review here) and continue to develop on their sophomore outing, You Will Know Nothing.
Also their second for RidingEasy Records, it finds Garcia and Mann delving further into rhythmic complexity and holding to a tonally weighted sonic architecture while conducting mathy sonic experiments and stomping away along a path that, for the time being, is almost entirely their own, opening with the hooky “Animal Noises,” digging into heavy riffs on songs like “Fighting” and just about everywhere bringing to bear a percussion-centric, keyboard-laced thrust and shuffle; music intended to move. Self-recorded, its 11-track/39-minute run is both manageable and visionary. They write their own “Planet Caravan” in “Floating on Water,” and spend much of the proceedings toying with the balance to one side or the other of their sound, aided by percussionists Richard Panta and Reinaldo DeJesus on congas and Victor Axelrod (ex-Antibalas) on keys.
In a song like the thickened “Blindness” or even the spacious, relatively minimal centerpiece “Voices at the Window,” Here Lies Man own their aesthetic and bring it to bear with complexity manifest in subtle, low-mixed layers of keys and synth. The whole album is executed with a deceptive vibe. It’s possible to listen to it, be carried along by the bounce of “Summon Fire” and “Taking the Blame” and the two-minute boogie of the penultimate “Memory Games,” but the deeper one digs into the mix, the more one finds to find, whether its a quiet swirl, an extra layer of guitar, whatever. Especially for an album so bent on forward rhythmic motion, that builds such a sense of momentum as it careens from one song to the next — again, even in its quiet moments — it is especially satisfying to also find it so nuanced. The dream drone in closer “You Ought to Know” that seems to have been there all along but makes itself known as the band picks up with the central linear build.
The departure of the keys from the main riff in the intro to “Hell (Wooly Tail),” and the layers of voices that emerge from there, echoing from someplace further down amid the fuzzy low end. Even “Animal Noises” refuses to let You Will Know Nothing‘s outset pass without a dive into multi-layered keys and congas, starting off the record with a fervent momentum that cuts in its final third to ringing guitar notes worthy of cult folk backed by Echoplex-style swirl. Where did we just go? How the hell did we get there? No time to think about it because “Summon Fire” is off and running immediately. It’s that kind of twisting and turning that Here Lies Man pull off so brilliantly, and whatever experimental aspects these songs may have, the band hasn’t lost sight of the basic roots of their construction. “Summon Fire” is catchy as hell, and likewise “Blindness,” and “Fighting” and the swinging “Taking the Blame” that like the side A opener it would seem to mirror at the start of side B, turns to strange and quiet keys before the shove of “Fighting” takes hold.
“Fighting” is pretty straightforward in its fuzz, keys and forward drive, and it makes a gang-shout-worthy hook out of the line “Shut your fucking mouth,” but the three subsequent tracks — the closing salvo of “Floating on Water,” “Memory Games” and “You Ought to Know” — comprise a showcase of Here Lies Man‘s sonic adventurousness. They go farther and farther out. As noted, “Floating on Water” is quieter, with keys and soft drums in the lead position, while “Memory Games,” in terms of sheer tone, might be the heaviest piece on You Will Know Nothing, though it still maintains the funk of chunkier earlier cuts like “Blindness,” “Hell (Wooly Tail)” and “Taking the Blame.” As they round out with “You Ought to Know,” there seems to be an arrival at some point of sonic serenity, and where in rounding out the album’s first half, “Voices at the Window” kept some tension beneath its surface, the finale is more genuinely interested in setting a peaceful atmosphere. Instrumental, it does embark on a subtle build, but there’s no overblown finish. A fuzzy solo arrives and leads the way out on a slow fade while the central key figure plays alongside, and they cap with echoing, far back guitar.
I flat out refuse to predict the course of a band’s career or what the arc of their influence will be. They could break up tomorrow and nix the whole thing. Still, Here Lies Man have already had an effect on the underground around them and that’s noteworthy, and they’ve now put out two outstanding — style-wise and achievement-wise — LPs in two years, but to say what they’ll do over the course of a full tenure or what their ultimate reach will be, to even pretend to guess, is irresponsible hyperbole. What I know is that Here Lies Man are on their own trip. In their blend of influences and their execution of the balances between them, they’re offering something that no one else is at this point, and for those open-minded and willing to make the journey along with them, walking that path is an absolute blast. Perhaps most encouraging of all is the sense of willful growth that permeates so much of You Will Know Nothing, since it assures that as ahead of their time as Here Lies Man are, their interest is in staying that way.
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Tags: California, Here Lies Man, Here Lies Man You Will Know Nothing, Los Angeles, RidingEasy Records, You Will Know Nothing
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