Send "Mike Watt " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 For an "opera" with not one but two concepts behind it, Hyphenated-Man sounds pretty grounded. That's because both of Mike Watt's overarching ideas lend themselves to short, pithy songs rather than bloated suites or pompous narratives. Watt's guides are the small, detailed characters in the work of 15th century painter Hieronymus Bosch, and the minimal punk of his own pioneering band the Minutemen. Basing each of the album's 30 songs on a Bosch character (and giving them names like "Jug-Footed-Man" and "Confused-Parts-Man"), Watt wrote everything in Minutemen "econo" mode, using late bandmate D. Boon's guitar. The goal, he says, was to make "one big work out of a bunch of little ones."Judged on that scale, Hyphenated-Man is a full-on success. The way Watt and his band the Missingmen blast through each taut musical nugget evokes early Minutemen albums such as The Punch Line and What Makes a Man Start Fires? As on those classics, each track fires by so quickly, you might not absorb one before you can catch up to the next. Nearly every song uses sharp turns, gruff energy, and snapping beats, making them all echo each other like rhyming lines in a poem. And like Bosch's characters, Watt's 30 "men" feel like brothers, united by an artistic cause. What gives those brothers personality-- and keeps Hyphenated-Man from being just a Minutemen nostalgia trip-- is the way Watt injects himself into every moment. His hard-working, art-punk-in-a-flannel-shirt persona courses through each syllable of his Dada-ish lyrics, and his voice stretches to match the music's spilling energy. "Panderin' to work the shill/ Procurin' ink for the quill," he wryly sings about "Bird-in-the-Helmet-Man". Later he grunts through a dizzying portrait of the hard-luck "Belly-Stabbed-Man": "A belly with ears stuck to some legs/ No arms or chest-- not even a head/ Stabbed with truth, fuckin' gets bled!"...full text |
| Blogcritics |
| Hyphenated-Man certainly describes Mike Watt. In fact, the man is so hyphenated one wonders where to begin. Mike Watt - punk legend, Mike Watt - bass player extraordinaire, Mike Watt - founder of the Minutemen, the list could go on and on. Mike Watt - survivor, may be the most appropriate descriptive term. It is a phrase I doubt any of his famous fans (and the rest of us) would argue. Watt’s new album, Hyphenated-Man, is his finest solo effort yet. It also seems to be a bit of a homage to the Minutemen’s most famous set, Double Nickels On The Dime. Mike Watt’s 30-plus year career as a musician began in the late seventies, when he and best friend D Boon got together in their hometown of San Pedro, CA. After recruiting drummer George Hurley, the trio christened themselves the Minutemen. Their third album, Double Nickels On The Dime, was released in 1984. It was a double-LP containing 45 songs, from a wide variety of sources. Although it never garnered the kind of mass attention that Prince’s 1999 did, Double Nickels has steadily grown in critical stature over the years, and remains the band’s best seller. One year later D Boon was killed in an auto accident, and the Minutemen were tragically over. Since 1985, Watt has remained active in music. He formed a new band, fIREHOSE with Hurley, recorded as a duo with Kira Roessler as Dos, toured as a member of The Stooges, and has four solo albums out now. Of all of these projects, Hyphenated-Man is the only one that seems to address the enduring legacy of Double Nickels On The Dime....full text |
| Rollingstone |
| Bassist Mike Watt — a third of Eighties hardcore-punk band the Minutemen, now in the Stooges — calls this album an "opera." He's right. The 30 tracks are blitzkrieg arias, sung and barked as if Watt is playing the shards of his heart and mind after a lifetime in the van ("Finger-Pointing- Man," "Hell-Building- Man"). His new trio reinvigorates the old one's rapid minimalism with the glass-bone guitar and rhythmic vertigo of Captain Beefheart's classic Magic Band. Loss is a constant presence on Hyphenated- Man, along with the memories left behind. "Forget? Fuck that, man," Watt snaps in "Confused-Parts-Man." "Learn from it."...full text |
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