Manhattan Murder Mystery
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Manhattan Murder Mystery

Los Angeles, California, United States | SELF

Los Angeles, California, United States | SELF
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"Manhattan Murder Mystery: A Bottomless Heart-To-Heart Talk"

This is a great interview. It's too long to fit in here, though, so please follow the link to the original. Thanks! - LA Record


"L.A. Unheard: Manhattan Murder Mystery offers raw, whiskey-soaked emotion"

The band: Manhattan Murder Mystery, a live-wire trio driven by Virginian-turned-Angeleno Matthew Teardrop.

The sound: Perhaps some pathos is to be expected from a band that took its name from a Woody Allen movie, and Teardrop’s songwriting is a blast of raw, whiskey-soaked emotion, driving rock rhythms and post-punk riffs. Drawing from his experiences working bad jobs, living in a new city, Teardrop taps into the anger and longing found at the bottom of a bottle, but his riffing, along with the rest of the band, keeps tracks like “I Always Think About Dying” rolling along. - LA Times


"Manhattan Murder Mystery - Self-Titled LP"

Matthew Teardrop doesn't care much for Bob Dylan. The Manhattan Murder Mystery frontman has publicly suggested that Hisao Shinagawa is the superior artist. I don't know Shinagawa's work, so I can't speak to that. But Teardrop has also confessed that he prefers Warren Zevon. This opinion, while daft, is marginally defensible.

As a rather fierce partisan, I'm inclined to denounce anyone who minimizes Dylan's centrality to everything that's good about rock and roll. But Teardrop is something of a visionary himself--as he amply demonstrates on his band's self-titled LP--so I feel compelled to take his contentions seriously.

Manhattan Murder Mystery's recent music inhabits a world where Dylan's Rimbaud years never happened, a world where poetry (both decent and godawful) has not become the default aspiration for rock and roll lyrics, a world where you have to have something to say--be it banal or profound--and you can't hide your vacuity behind abstraction.

Zevon built a cozy space for himself within this world. Eschewing the type of reverie that Dylan perfected in the sixties, Zevon was a yarn-spinner and a confessionalist. Whereas Dylan conveyed his drug-fueled exhaustion through Blonde on Blonde's menagerie of psychotic images, Zevon simply stated: "And I'm all strung out on heroin on the outskirts of town."

Which mode of expression you prefer is irrelevant. One isn't inherently better than the other. The Dylan mode speaks to a certain region of the brain, the Zevon mode to another. (And I am of course aware that, over the years, Dylan has periodically operated in the Zevon mode and Zevon had his dalliances in the Dylan mode. But let's not be pedantic.)

Anyway, I'd like to suggest that Manhattan Murder Mystery operates in the Zevon mode every bit as well as Zevon himself. From a strictly personal point of view, I'd contend that they do it better.

But, nonetheless, they are in Zevon's wheelhouse. Confessions of despair and alienation, unlikely folk heroes, darkly comic tales of violence and intoxication: they're all accounted for within Manhattan Murder Mystery's 35 minutes.

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Forced dichotomies aside, Teardrop is at heart a folk singer. More specifically, he is a protest singer. But, rather than political or social injustice, his outrage falls on existential injustice. He points his finger at fathers who judge their sons based on how well they can take a punch ("Trailer Trash"); at religiously insane parents who silence their children by locking them in the closet ("I Always Think About Dying"); at a world where following the rules and attaining material success is a barren absurdity, but the alternative ain't much better ("Honda Prius"); at loneliness, and the grating, mundane horror of life (damn near every song).

And, much like his forebears through the centuries, Teardrop does it all in the piercing vernacular of the everyday. In a recent interview, he said he no longer tries to write poetry, and that, in a song like "Smoky Mountain", "there's no analogies or anything to figure out."

While it's true that "Smoky Mountain" will likely never be taught in a university setting, its power transcends metaphor and traditionally poetic forms of language. Out of context, lines like, "Oh everyone makes mistakes all the time / Lord knows, I've made mine," and, "And tonight / I've got my lines memorized / I'm going to take you by surprise," sound a bit stale, a bit hoary. However, in context--surrounded by aching details, delivered with startling conviction--they comprise some of the most stirring and moving and delirious moments you'll ever hear on record.

If it's not poetry, it's something just as good.

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Yes, yes. But how does it sound?

I know this question has nagged at more than a few devotees of Manhattan Murder Mystery's live show. The intensity of feeling conveyed by the band in person feels untranslatable--it's not something that can be replicated via iPod or stereo.

But, I'm pleased - The 704


"Show Reviews"

One of the best things about going to shows is seeing bands that are new to you. Sure, most of them suck but Manhattan Murder Mystery was totally worth sticking around for. While the tormented vocals sometimes reminded me of American Steel and the super catchy melodies channeled slower songs by Avail, it was the singer’s wearing a full backpack, harmonica headgear, and hoodie up that got my attention. Weird. But also also extra punchy, seemingly populist, and shockingly infectious–even for an old guy like me. I’ll have track down their recorded stuff and find out what the heck they sing about. - Giant Robot


Discography

Skull (2010)
Merry Christmas, Wesley Willis (2010)
Manhattan Murder Mystery (2011)
Women House (2011)

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Bio

Manhattan Murder Mystery are an alcohol-powered emotional-nudity machine consisting of Virginian-turned-Angeleno Matthew Teardrop, drummer Laura Velez, bassist Katya Arce, guitarist Todd Mclaughlin, and pianist Mateo. They formed in 2009 and have since developed an onstage intensity that’s undeniably solid, not to mention totally infectious, rowdy and engaging.

The only non-native Angeleno in the group, Matthew Teardrop came to LA from Virginia and met Laura the old fashioned way: craigslist. Between his undeniably truthful songs and his unique personality (somehow both dark and optimistic, reserved and larger-than-life) he soon gathered a devoted group of friends in the Echo Park music scene, with Manhattan Murder Mystery squarely in the middle of it, welcoming everyone on stage along side them to play or dance or sing.

The sound of Manhattan Murder Mystery has been compared to the Smiths, the Replacements, and the Cramps. The songwriting has won comparisons to Warren Zevon, Lou Reed, and Patti Smith. They are inheritors of postpunk who don’t pander to its legacy; they extend it.