Sunday afternoon I got an email about Monday night’s Precious Metal ritual at Lit Lounge in NYC, and to my surprise, it was the recently-featured Man’s Gin playing the show. The email said it was just two acts, and that the show was starting at 8:45, so I got out of class and hightailed it into the city in time to hopefully catch Goldhail, who was opening.

I made it and then some. The basement of Lit — a fucking institution when it comes to heaviness in Manhattan — wasn’t open when I got there, so it was happy hour upstairs for a drink while I waited. When I did get down there, I was one of about five people not playing. I paid my $6 willingly, helping a good cause. It was Goldhail‘s first show, and the one-man project of The Nolan Gate guitarist Paul Andress was a little rough in the offing, but interesting nonetheless, bouncing Gary Arce tones through loops and off the concrete walls. For a Precious Metal night that wasn’t really all that metal, it wasn’t out of place.

It was just the two bands, Andress as Goldhail and Man’s Gin, so I didn’t expect a late night and I didn’t get one. Joining Erik Wunder was Inswarm‘s Josh Lozano on guitar, bass, vocals and saxaboom (days to learn, weeks to master), as well as percussionist Brett Zweiman of experimentalists Clutter. Scott Edward was the missing piece of Man’s Gin “usual” lineup — I put “usual” in quotes because they’ve only played a few shows together — but Lozano, Wunder (on vocals and guitar) and Zweiman managed to put together a satisfying show nonetheless, riding as only the brashest of outfits can on swagger, talent and songwriting.

Wunder having made the curious decision to play without a shirt on, they played cuts from the Smiling Dogs album, opening with “Free” and including “Nuclear Ambition” parts one and two (with banter beforehand about whether or not they were indeed two separate songs), the title track, “Hate Money Love Woman” and set-highlight “Doggamn,” along with covers of Nirvana and Will Oldham. I would have liked to see “The Death of Jimmy Sturgis,” but in a world where you’re paying $5 for a bottle of Budweiser because you’re afraid if you don’t the place will close down, beggars can’t be choosers.

It was a low-key night for all involved. Wunder and Lozano were joking around as much as they were playing, pointing out friends in the crowd (most of us sat in the pews lining the walls) and joking about the video camera taping the show. Still, I think they probably sounded much better than they knew; the guitar strums of “Hate Money Love Woman” were gorgeous almost in spite of themselves. When it was over, I made my way back around the corner to my car and out the Holland, hitting practically no traffic, as had also been the case on the way into the city. I was back in the valley before midnight. Some nights, you just win.

Some measure of profile comes automatically attached to Brooklyn‘s Man’s Gin, owing to singer/guitarist Erik Wunder‘s continuing tenure in Profound Lore avant black metallers Cobalt, but more than that, what attracted me to the project’s first full-length, Smiling Dogs, was the rugged-yet-vulnerable songwriting style and unique approach to melody. The album reads like Bukowski; a collection of misfit philosophies and offbeat characters who seem built, drunk, for another world. I said in my review that it was one of the most impressive debuts I’ve heard in 2010 and a couple months later, as the year begins to wind down, I stand by that completely.

Man’s Gin, as Wunder explains in the subsequent interview, started half a decade ago and began in earnest — or at least in the sense of making an album — after the multi-instrumentalist moved to Brooklyn from Denver, Colorado. In that most “$8 PBR” of boroughs, Wunder hooked up with co-conspirators Scott Edward and Josh Lozano and began to fine-tune the material he’d been working on for so long, resulting also in some new songs that would become highlights of Smiling Dogs — tracks like “Solid Gold Telephone” and “The Death of Jimmy Sturgis.”

As a band with Wunder, Edward and Lozano, Man’s Gin has really only just begun its tenure, but gigs in New York alongside Altar of Plagues and Castevet and most recently with Kirk Lloyd of Buzzov*en have helped the band gain both exposure and reputation. In our conversation, Wunder discusses the move from Denver to Brooklyn, his collection of tapes with unused song ideas, working in Man’s Gin as opposed to Cobalt, recording with Colin Marston (Behold! the Arctopus, et al), and much more.

You’ll find the complete Q&A after the jump. Please enjoy.

Read more »

It’s a rare album whose choruses will have you singing along the first time. Usually you have to hear a song once or twice before you feel comfortable belting it out with the kind of reckless abandon you can only have in your car when you think no one is watching, but in the case of Smiling Dogs (Profound Lore), the first album from Man’s Gin, the solo project of Erik Wunder, also known as the Hemingway obsessed half of the black metal duo Cobalt. First time listening to the hyper-Jerry Cantrell-esque “The Death of Jimmy Sturgis,” it was as though I’d known the song all my life, and listening to it was like revisiting an old friend.

That’s par for the course to varying degrees for Smiling Dogs. What I take away most from my repeat sessions with the album is how Wunder managed to hide this innate songwriting ability in Cobalt, whose songs rely on more open structures and esoteric methods. Man’s Gin might be an overflow of the impulse to create, but whatever the case, it’s delivered soaked in passion, so that even as Wunder begins a song in his big boy deep singing voice, it’s not long before a track like closer “Doggamn” has him so psyched to play it that there’s a quick key change. That kind of thing happens a lot, and it only adds to the natural, genuinely organic vibe of Smiling Dogs. Colin Marston of Dysrhythmia, who recorded the album at his The Thousand Caves studio in Brooklyn – to which Wunder relocated prior to putting Man’s Gin together — is hardly known for this kind of thing, but damn if he doesn’t evoke a deep-hued, almost morose beauty in a memorable track like “Solid Gold Telephone.”

Read more »

Man’s Gin is the new project from Cobalt multi-instrumentalist and Hemingway enthusiast Erik Wunder. Now residing in Brooklyn, NY, having relocated from Denver (I cannot imagine why someone would do such a thing), he’s joined in Man’s Gin by Scott Edward and Inswarm‘s Josh Lozano, and the three explore dark post-folk Americana with Wunder out front singing melodic in a huge departure from Cobalt‘s blackened ambience. I dig it.

Profound Lore, who will be releasing the Man’s Gin debut, Smiling Dogs, in August, has the title-track posted for preview-type listening. Here it is, followed by PR wire info about the record. To their list of influences, I’d add the solo acoustic work of Neurosis‘ Steve Von Till and Scott Kelly. But that’s me. Enjoy the track:

Smiling Dogs

Man’s Gin (featuring Erik Wunder of Cobalt) have completed work on their debut album, Smiling Dogs.

Smiling Dogs is a moving musical pilgrimage reminiscent of the vibe of such acts as Woven Hand, Deadboy & the Elephant Men, Dax Riggs’ solo stuff, 16 Horsepower, Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen Nebraska-era. With a singer-songwriter approach (obviously this is not metal in the slightest) that dabbles with southern rock and Americana folk, Smiling Dogs is a journey through the dark heart of America’s desolate, barren, and ghostly wastelands.

To be released late August, tracklisting for Smiling Dogs goes as follows:

1. Smiling Dogs
2. Free
3. Stone on My Head
4. Solid Gold Telephone
5. Nuclear Ambition Part 1
6. Nuclear Ambition Part 2
7. The Death of Jimmy Sturgis
8. Hate.Money.Love.Woman.
9. Doggamn