The Men's Open Your Heart's one of my favorite albums of the decade, drifting effortlessly from immediacy to patience and back. Everything The Men did afterwards fell flat: failed at the simmer, the boil, and the movement between.
2011's Leave Home has some of that old magic though, even if the structure's a little more predictable. If You Leave... spends a solid 3 minutes getting going before stomping in place for 4 more; it's organic, live, exciting, connected. And then the fury goes up and up, staying way too long in the shrieking nothing of LADOCH, before making a miraculous recovery, winding its way back down through thrilling, textured punk-motorik contours.
I like noise, but those six LADOCH minutes in the middle are a total momentum-killer, sounding sloppy and indulgent, and it's a shame cause the rest is so good. These guys had a deadly sense of pacing, letting riffs spool our organically, hitting the subconscious and the pelvis in all the right ratios. A near-great album, at least made more memorable by its mistakes 4/5
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