Sunburned Hand of the Man

Sunburned Hand Of The Man are one of those mysterious, nebulous ‘free-folk’ collectives that some of my geekier friends get real excited about. Hailing from the backwoods of Massachusetts and seeing through the past six years with a variety of self-released LPs and CDRs, I pictured these kids in my mind in grainy super-8 living a life that was, well, way the fuck out-there. You know, every one of them wandering around naked and bearded (including the girls), hand-fashioning their record sleeves out of burlap and lentils, chanting and casting spells while tin pots and wind chimes created the background music that they lived by.

So it was something of a disappointment, I have to confess, when the 7 Sunburned men took to the stage at 93 Feet East. I mean, sure, police sirens were wailing in the background and several band members were shaking sticks, shouting and yelling as they emerged from the darkness. But the fact that they were here in my hometown, that they wore jeans and trainers like me, that their equipment turned out to be everyday rock n roll equipment…the fact that they actually existed in real life dispelled the myth that I enjoyed holding onto. Instead of being the forgotten children of Woodstock they were kids just like me, with mums and mobile phones to phone them on.

The performance was largely a shambolic affair, louder than many of their records by some distance. A bandanna-ed and masked John Moloney pounded the drums like a demon and yelled deranged, spoken-word rants into the mic. Various members of the band whooped and held up masks in ritualistic play, giving the evening a sort of Lord Of The Flies atmosphere. The set was bass-heavy and the pivotal moments were centred around a big bad rock riff that had the whiff of 1,000 bong hits about it. They rocked harder than I might have expected them to, but overall the set was unfocused and rather monotonous compared to their subtle work on albums like ‘Headdress’ and ‘The Trickle Down Theory of the Lord’. Ultimately, it seemed like the real fun was to be had onstage rather than in the audience. Or maybe I’m just being grumpy because the reality of Sunburned Hand Of The Man was far less exciting that the version I’d always imagined.