The problem with writing a show review like this when you wake up rather than before you go to bed is that you have to ask yourself, ‘Did a guy with jean shorts and a bushy moustache really draw a target on the side of Lee’s Palace’s stage, smash a glass on it, then try and mic the sound of pouring water into a bowl, all while sporting a deadly serious expression?’ ‘Did I really see the second coming of Jaco Pastorius, fretless bass, flowing locks of hair, tight tank top and all?’ Was it all just a crazy dream?

Seeing Philadelphia oddballs Man Man and Brooklyn indie-prog darlings Yeasayer together was guaranteed to be a surreal experience. Avant-weird rock darlings Dragons of Zynth opened the show but suffered from worse sound than they had when they played the El Mocambo in the fall. The bass (played this time by an unnamed new member) was nonexistent until their second-to-last song, which combined with the opening slot left them sounding flat and decidedly un-Dragon-like. Yeasayer fared better, though the imbalance between lead singer Chris Keating and bassist Ira Wolf Tuton’s microphones was as annoying as when one of your headphones starts to crap out. Still, with their cyclical melodies dovetailing around drummer Luke Fasano’s insistent battering, it was easy to drift off in the haze of harmonized vocal chants and driving grooves in “2080.” Or just stare at Tuton’s formidable moustache. The next time they come back it will almost certainly be as headliners, so see them as soon as you can, before both the hippie and frat contingents invading in the back and sides of last night’s crowd swell into full-sized hordes of camera-phone-wielders and/or soap dodgers.

Man Man give the impression that they don’t shower much, partly because they take their fashion tips from the unemployed. (Jean shorts. Jean shorts!) But I’ll bet you they really do take care of their personal hygiene, secretly, because seeing them live proved that for all their cacophonous screaming and capricious arrangements, flitting from idea to idea like bees trying to decide between a hundred identical hives, these guys are absolutely meticulous musicians. You wouldn’t expect a guy named Pow Pow to be mining the same drumming territory as the late Max Roach did, nor would you think lead guy, keyboardist and man-of-jean-short-fame Honus Honus would be leading the band through pre-war jazz-tunes augmented with a touch more hollering than was the norm.

Even after all the Sun Ra and Captain Beefheart comparisons (and really, figuring out how to describe them in terms of other music is a diverting little parlour game — I’m fond of one acquaintance’s formulation that calls them Tom Waits playing with the Arcade Fire, on acid, in a nightmare you’re secretly enjoying) their musicianship is the most surprising thing about them. Barrelling through large sections of their new disc Rabbit Habbits with saxophones, xylophones, yelling and plenty of percussion, everything from “Mister Jung Stuffed” through to “Gold Teeth” was bursting with energy, and a kind of intense searching you hear way more often in ecstatic free jazz than in indie rock. Their theatricality definitely adds to the show — Honus emerging from backstage with a crown-like headband and a ripped black blouse over a pink polo shirt, gesturing wildly, is the definition of low-budget showmanship — but they also have the songs to back it up. For the first few seconds, “Big Trouble” sounds like a throwaway dose of post-punk skronk, but there’s a Dixieland funeral march buried in the band’s irreverent version of it, and a perfectly good one. Man Man are funny, but whatever you do, don’t dismiss them as just a joke.

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