MEN

Are We Not Men?

Fronted by JD Samson of Le Tigre fame, Brooklyn-based band/performance art collective MEN celebrate the struggle and freedom in defying easy classification. JENNIFER PETERSON-WARD sat down with Samson ahead of their performance on Saturday, February 25, at the Perth Festival Gardens.

“To be honest I am worried that [my music] alienates some listeners,” begins JD Samson, an admission which may surprise fans familiar with the colourful career of the queer activist and dance-punk icon.
Playing with standard perceptions of life and standard definitions of musical genre, performance, and presentation has been a core part of Samson’s artistic career throughout her work with Peaches, Dykes Can Dance, and most notably with post-punk trio Le Tigre. Yet Samson attests that her new musical project MEN has forced her to re-evaluate how her songs are married to politics and thoughtful provocation.
“The whole idea with [debut record] Talk About Body is that we were juxtaposing political ideas and ‘not so happy’ tones with commercial sounds. I wanted to build that juxtaposition up to make the inherent qualities of the genre play off each other. However, after listening to the record in its entirety, we realised that we talk about a couple of things pretty regularly on it – the body, and also sex and gender expression and identity,” Samson says.
“We’re writing a new record at the moment and we’re trying to be a little more all encompassing, particularly with the lyrics. We’re trying to be general and specific at the same time, if that makes sense. To me, MEN is first and foremost concerned with creating music that is danceable. That’s the aim,” Samson continues. “It’s so difficult to find that balance between not watering yourself down but also not pushing your messages and ideas out onto an unwilling audience. We’re going to be more conscious of that this time around.”
Despite her wish for MEN’s music to be appreciated outside of LGBT circles, Samson says the outfit feel “honoured” to have been embraced by this community.
“We’re pretty lucky to have support from such a niche audience. We’re interested in change so to have such positive feedback helps us realise we’re doing the right thing. I think we’re part of a bunch of different music scenes in a way because of our sound and also our lyrics and content and also just being part of the queer scene – we are happy to be part of all those different things,” she says.
MEN are also known for their live shows in which music, costume and multimedia work together to create an unbridled vibrant spectacle.
“Our energy is high and we really give it our all,” Samson concludes. “It’s important to have a stage persona and give something to the audience that’s more than playing an instrument. We’ve tried to make performance art and I think the costumes and backdrops are a huge part of that. We’re interested in taking a more ‘4D approach’ with our visuals. We care a lot about what’s going on onstage and what it looks like from our audience’s perspective, we’re certainly not going to play looking at our feet.”