Man or Astro-Man? @ Crescent Ballroom

Everyone is aware you’re all hopped up because Neutral Milk Hotel is reuniting for the first time since Jesus fed the 5,000 and because Boards of Canada will have a new album for the first time since Hatshepsut constructed the Temple of Karnak. But before you pee your pants a third time, let me remind you that it has been almost 12 whole years since Man or Astro-Man? released an album. All hot and bothered from their gig at Austin Psych Fest, MOAM? will showcase their latest space-rock meets surf-rock meets fucking insane rock on an album called Defcon 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1. As you can imagine, coming from a self-described group of aliens posing as former college students, it’s, uh, out of this world. Likewise, MOAM?’s live gigs are something to behold, often featuring Tesla coils, theremins, and even vintage dot-matrix printers. This is a band that claims to have cloned themselves not once but twice, the second time as females. Explaining their nearly decade-long absence from the public eye to Wired, MOAM? said, “Man or Astro-Man? exploded rapidly, covering an exponentially greater area, but the edge collapsed on itself. And now it’s a dying star, the formation of a white dwarf, perhaps leading to our own sonic black hole.” Far out, dudes.