The world will not be short of lockdown-inspired recording projects for some time. Happily, though, the songs on MAN ON MAN’s debut radiate such warmth and tenderness that they stand out in a crowded field of quarantine transmissions. Listening to this album is rather like being invited not just into the home of musical and romantic partners Joey Holman and Roddy Bottum, but into the middle of an embrace that’s somewhat friendlier than the wrestling hold depicted on its cover. Roddy will be familiar to many as the keyboard player in Faith No More, but here he eschews both their maximalist alt-metal and the bubblegum power-pop of his next best-known band Imperial Teen. Instead, MAN ON MAN deal in woozy shoegaze cuddles and wistful, low-key ballads. The mixture of propulsive rhyth...
