A Man Alive is over three years old now, but I keep returning to it because, first of all, Thao Ngyuen bought me a drink at the Taft Theatre back in 2014, so she is obviously the best, but more importantly, the songs on this record continue to reveal new, sparkly little gems with every listen. “Meticulous Bird” begins with a funky danceable beat and Ngyuen’s clever rhymes, and could totally be a pop song, except that it soon veers into the kind of complexity that in less-skilled hands would render it dissonant. In Nguyen’s hands, however, we get a song that is pop and jazz, hip-hop and electronica at…

    Thao & the Get Down Stay Down is the kind of band that forces your body to move, even when you are listening to heartbreak and devastating loss and grief and death.         Example: try not to tap your toes to this funky single, “Nobody Dies,” from their new album A Man Alive. In it, a woman remembers watching her father leave as a girl. “You made a cruel kid, come look what you did.” But the buoyant rhythm of the bass, guitar, and drums gives the song a gutsy, bright sound at odds with the lyrics, which lament the force of human denial. We act like nobody dies You act like…