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Coachella 2011: Dancing your way into credit card debt with MEN

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In the week leading up to the Friday kickoff of the Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Pop & Hiss offers a preview of some of this year’s less-established or underappreciated artists.

Who: MEN

When: Sunday, April 17

From: Brooklyn, N.Y.

MEN, the art/performance collective founded by Le Tigre’s JD Samson, will be performing two days after taxes are due, but trust that they feel your pain. One of the spikier sentiments to be found on its debut release, ‘Talk About Body,’ regard the complications of being a broke artist in a world that parties first and writes the check later. Or wait, maybe that’s an advantage? Nevermind, just pass the $7.99 Champagne.

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Money also makes a handy analogy for all sorts of sexual-political statements, which they touch on above in ‘Off Our Backs,’ a title that nods to the longstanding but now-defunct feminist journal. As heavy as that all might sound, it’s certainly not when there are dips of hot-lava bass, rubbery synths and a disco beat to spur on dance-floor frenzy.

In ‘Credit Card Babie$,’ Samson and her cohorts Michael O’Neill and Ginger Brooks Takahashi paint a little utopia, one with friends procreating to make ‘a newborn gay creation’ raised on radical politics. Alas, even in that reality, ‘our love goes on credit card.’ Price of Coachella ticket: $320. Price of a cup of beer: $7. Dancing to hot agit-prop disco: Priceless.

--Margaret Wappler

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