Monolith Cocktail Blog

REVIEWS
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea





Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea joined the Monolith Cocktail team at the beginning of the year. The cult leader of the infamous lo fi gods, The Bordellos, has released countless recordings over the decades with his family band of hapless unfortunates, and is the owner of a most self-deprecating sound-off style blog. His most recent project, Roi (with John McCarthy and Dan Shea, of Beauty Stab and Vukovar infamy) debuted a couple of months back through Metal Postcard Records.

Each week we send a mountain of new releases to the self-depreciating maverick to see what sticks. In his own idiosyncratic style and turn-of-phrase, pontificating aloud and reviewing with scrutiny an eclectic deluge of releases, here Brian’s latest batch of recommendations.

The NoMen  ‘NoMania’
LP/ 30^th October 2019

The New album by underground Scottish cult band The NoMen once again explores their love of genre hopping musical delights, from folk to psych to punk to pop to rockabilly to Krautrock and back again: sometimes in the same song. All the tracks are brimming with a joyful enthusiasm that can only be found when the music is being made by music lovers and not flag waving careerists.

This is an album of songs that are not afraid to take themselves too seriously, by a band that music lovers should take very seriously indeed.

It’s not everyday you come across a band who understands the joy and magic that can be achieved in making willfully experimental genre hopping pop music with a smile on its face.

Telgate ‘Cherrytight’
Single/ 22^nd November 2019

Aw bless Telgate’s little Teflon trousers; they don’t half make me feel old with their lust for life and their contagious excitement of being in a band. I remember those days well, all those years ago rehearsal rooms, gigs in little toilet venues, dreaming of the day when they will see their names in lights when they are wrote about in the NME. Not that being written about in the NME is possible anymore, but the Monolith Cocktail will have to do it instead. I remember those days and good luck to them.

I like this single. I like that it’s four minutes twenty two seconds long and in that four minutes twenty two they achieve nothing that has not been done before and that is a point in its favour. It is simple glam punk rock’n’roll. They are young and they are enjoying themselves. Iggy Pop did not do anything new or original with The Stooges and he is considered one of the greats and rightly so. And this just carries on that rock’n’roll tradition of being sexy, being enthusiastic sounding, like you are enjoying life. I like that they will think who is this jaded old cunt reviewing our debut single and they are right to think that as I am on all counts old jaded, and a cunt. And I like it even more because it does not sound anything like Oasis: it sounds like they have not even heard of Oasis. Oh wouldn’t life be grand if I had never heard Oasis.

Dub Chieftain ‘Puppo Shadets’
(Metal Postcard Records) LP/ 22^nd October 2019

Now this is something I like. It’s inventive. It’s fun. It’s Psych with the “delica” attached. It’s fun with the letter k attached at the end. It’s the sound of a playful mind revisiting the golden age of could-not-really-give-shit; an album made with personal enjoyment in mind.

Folk pop and psych weave in and out of bewitching instrumental wizardry; young children’s voices scrummage toy like wonkiness evoking the memories of the spirit of Brian Wilsons’ SMiLE and Joe Meeks I Hear A New World. This really is a gem of a release one of the many that Metal Postcard Records has released this year and one that deserves to reach out and grab the lovers of the slightly unusual by their eccentric gene, shaking heartedly until exploding into a spurt of joy.

No New Dawn ‘Double Dream’
(Other Voices Records) LP/ 2020

The darling sound of 80’s keyboard nostalgia wrapped up in a post punk soundscape of gothic delights; an LP to stride around the room whilst holding your cape aloft and declaring your love to the montage of dead dried flowers you forgot to send to the person of your fancy.

Double Dream would have gone down a bomb with the ripped beer mats thrown in the air brigade: all Wayne Hussey sunglasses thigh length boots and Casio flavoured velvet underpants. Music to watch a vampire chase a young lady in an alternative nightclub in the 80s to.

Very enjoyable and entertaining I can imagine a whole host of middle-aged Goths driving their kids mad with this. It made me smile anyway.

Automatic ‘Signal’
(Stones Throw) LP/ 27^th September 2019

Automatic are the sound of youth, the joy of skinny hipped hollow cheek boned beauty personified, all wrapped up in the caress of Psycho killer bass lines and early Human League synth noises. The Automatic offers the soundtrack of a forever Friday night, a walk down the wild side kissing under the neon light with the boy or girl of your dreams, dancing wildly to your favourite new wave hit from your parents record collection.

The past and future collide on this impressive collection of post punk synth bass led tunesmithery. An LP I recommend wholeheartedly, it’s fun sexy and chic in all the right ways without any pretensions of being too grown up or planned. Rock ‘n’ roll is never grown up or planned.