REVIEWSMan Man, ‘Rabbit Habits’

4

• SPIN Rating:4 of 10

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Label: Anti-

This Philly quartet's third album clumsily aspires to create a postapocalyptic Frank Zappa circus -- and singer Honus Honus, once content to roar in a scraped Tom Waits growl, now slouches into a testy whine. "Harpoon Fever (Queequeg's Playhouse)" strikes closest to the band's live Gypsy-punk volatility, with a suddenly sweet girl-group hook that rings of Little Peggy March's "I Will Follow Him" sped up 20 times. But lacking a balance between pretty and ugly, their experimental alchemy is scabrously tiring, with cacophonous fragments that never connect.

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