The Men

The Men formed in 2008 in Brooklyn, NY.  The first members were Nick Chiericozzi and Mark Perro, fresh out of the disintegration of Fucking Hell.  They rented a basement practice space on N. 3rd St and Kent avenue and practiced relentlessly.  This yielded a five song demo, recorded by Mark on a Tascam four-track machine.  The duo made 30 copies on other bands' cassettes and gave them out.  Only half of the used cassettes were dubbed correctly, the other half still contained original music by 15 other bands.

In the beginning of 2009, Chris Hansell joined the band and shows were booked. For the first few outings, they played a musical round robin and all switched off on guitar, bass, and drums, until finally the lineup of Mark on drums, Chris on bass, and Nick on guitar was solidified.  The Men all sang.  A vinyl pressed four song EP, We Are the Men, spun at 45 rpms and was recorded with Will Killingsworth in an afternoon.  The first tour followed later that summer.  The band went back to Killingsworth to record their first full length album. The Immaculada LP was completed the following May in Massachusetts. The band self released the LP and their friend, Rich Samis, designed the artwork. Rich then began to accompany The Men on tour as roadie.

In 2010, the band recorded its second LP, Leave Home.  Ben Greenberg's Python Patrol Studios was the incubator for the sessions.  Shortly after the recording, Rich Samis officially joined the band on drums. He introduced The Men to his friend Kevin Faulkner, who shot the album's cover and insert photos.  The album was released by Sacred Bones Records in 2011.  The Men toured heavily on this record.
The band continued their seemingly endless touring throughout the year and into the next, recording another LP in the process, Open Your Heart, again with Ben Greenberg serving as producer/engineer.  A slightly mutated lineup ensued: Mark Perro on guitar, Nick Chiericozzi on guitar, Chris Hansell on bass, Rich Samis on drums, and Kevin Faulkner contributing musically for the first time on lap steel.
Shortly after recording, the band parted ways with Chris Hansell. Ben Greenberg stepped up to fill Hansell's place. The Men still all sang. Open Your Heart came out in 2012. The Men played almost 200 shows that year, only stopping to rent a mountainside house in Big Indian, NY. The resulting LP, New Moon was recorded over a few weeks in a makeshift living room studio where the band lived and made music together, with Greenberg expanding his producer/engineer role to also include bass, guitar, vocals, and songwriting as a full member of the band. New Moon came out in March 2013 and the band has been touring hard since, traveling as far and wide as Australia, Slovenia, and Saskatoon.

October 2013 saw the release of the Campfire Songs EP, which was tracked during the upstate sessions for New Moon. The new EP reflects the instrumental flexibility of the current lineup, with all members sharing guitar and singing duties, and even branching out into some new territory involving experimental hand percussion.

Amid all this, The Men began writing and demoing the proper follow-up to New Moon. By the end of winter 2012, they had pared a crop of more than 40 demos down to 13 songs, which they decided to record those songs before New Moon came out. They booked two days at Brooklyn's Strange Weather studios, clocked in, and tracked all 13 songs entirely live. A horn section stopped by as well, contributing to two songs and playing live right along with the band.

Eight songs from those sessions made the final cut for The Men's new LP for Sacred Bones, the tongue-in-cheek-but-still-auspiciously-titled Tomorrow's Hits. This is their first album recorded in a high-end studio and, appropriately, the result is their most high fidelity album to date. That being said, it is still an incredibly straightforward record. Tomorrow's Hits is a concise collection of songs that nonetheless expands the band's ever-evolving musical palette. It's an album full of genre-bending risks, but it reinforces the overarching theme that has come to define its makers: The Men are a great rock band.