Monolith Cocktail Blog

Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea’s Roundup Of Reviews

THE SINGLE

Mediocre ‘To Know You’re Screwed Is To Know A Lot’
(Dangerbirds Records)

I am quite pleased to be able to say that Mediocre do not live up to their name. And that ‘To Know You’re Screwed Is To Know A Lot’ is a fine catchy indie rock/pop splurge of hormonal excitement, a brief couple of minutes of thinking “I really will have to dig out that Elastica album from my collection”. And Mediocre emit the same ‘I do not give a fuckery’ as that once wonderful band.

Mediocre has announced their Dangerbird Records debut EP To Know You’re Screwed, due out April 7th.

ALBUMS

Schizo Fun Addict ‘Love Your Enemies…’
(Fruits Der Mer) 20^th March 2023

I will be honest I love Schizo Fun Addict and have been really looking forward so much to hearing this album, especially after hearing the two teasers tracks released over the last few months: ‘Forever Before’ the opening track is a blissful foray into 60s Californian jangle, with a hint of soft shoegaze shuffle, and even better, the complete gem of a song ‘Fate Chase’, a song worthy of the Mamas and Papas with a beautiful chiming guitar riff worthy of Roger McGuin at his most inspired, and if anyone ever asks what is perfect pop just play them this gem.

Love Your Enemies… in fact is a album full of beautiful pop songs; songs that where made to be played on the radio, to be shared with your nearest and dearest. Songs that are filled with love and emotion: ‘Activate’ and ‘Over The Hills And Far Away’, the Led Zepp cover that actually far surpasses the original, are both extremely moving. And ‘Outrun’, my favourite track on the album, has one believing there must be a God: how else could there be anything quite so heavenly sounding.

This album is one of the best and wormiest sounding albums I have heard in many years. It has the same magic and otherworldly but inwardly peaceful calmness about it as Pet Sounds, and there is something about Schizo Fun Addict that reminds me of the Beach Boys but without ever actually sounding like them – I will put it down to musical genius and heavenly inspiration.

Love Your Enemies… is available to buy on ltd vinyl from Fruits Der Mer records, or if there is none of them left by the time you read this can be downloaded from Schizo Fun Addicts’ bandcamp page. Either way just get it into your life.

Floral Portrait  ‘S-T’
Available Now

Music is indeed timeless as this beautiful work of aural art demonstrates. Floral Portrait has produced a work of pure pop, a masterclass in baroqueness – you could say they are going for baroque if one is inclined, in which I am. I’m also inclined to let myself drift away in the gentleness of the soft waves of psych that engulfs my Sunday morning, taking me floatingly to the melody inn a place where The Zombies and the Pet Sounds era Beach Boys reside, a place where the house band is Nirvana (the 60s version not the strange way to rid ones selves of acne version). Yes indeed-y, this album is one of pure 60s sunshine and yearning delight.

Hawk Percival  ‘Night Moods Vol.I’
(Think Like A Key Records)  Available Now

Oh my god! How I love Hawk Percival. She is like a lo-fi indie Noosha Fox (I am once again showing my age). But come on, ‘S-S-S-Single Bed’ was one of the singles of the 70s and I think that Hawk Percival shows the potential to make something equally as wonderfully magical, as this 6 track mini album shows so much pop suss and quirky originality.

It takes from the past – you can hear the timeless melodies from the 60s/70s – and twists it into something new. She plucks the spinning melodies from the air and weaves them into her own unique creation making an album of future desert island discs. I think Hawk Percival could well be one to watch.

This album is part of the DIY music series released by the excellent Think Like A Key records, and good on them for releasing this little lo-fi treasure.

Various Artists  ‘New No York’
(Metal Postcard Records) Available Now

A compilation of music from Metal Postcard bands, but what all these bands have in common is Andy Goz. Yes, the guitar genius who’s in all these bands, and all the bands are of course pretty darn special.

The Neon Kittens, the first band featured on the comp, show that they’re beyond seductiveness with four tracks of dark sexual solitude, a murderous art cartoon of frustration, the yearning softly spoken female vocals of Nina K, and discordant guitar haunts-the-inner-art-school-no-wave-cool that lurks deep within all of us.

The second band featured is the mad post punk joy that is the Salem Trials. Andy this time is joined by the wonderful Russ. Imagine Mark e Smith and Pete Shelly spitting live wasps at each other whilst Keith Richards watches on in amused disgust detuning his guitar, sucking on a cigarette rolled with the ashes of the dearly departed Tom Verlaine. Four tracks of post-punk wonder and originality: no one sounds like the wonderful Salem Trials.

The third band is the experimental post-punk dance pop Lucy & The Drill Holes, the most gothic and dance-y of the four bands featured. It’s the sound of Stereolab’s French Disco being invaded by and sketched by shy mellow art lovers.

The final band, the Clickbaiters, are the most rock ‘n’ roll and punk of the four, at times resembling early 80s Fall and, at other times, coming across like post- punk psychobillies Demented Are Go or Alien SexFiend, especially on ‘Lousy Friend’ – 2 minutes 43 seconds of pure spite and disgust – and the excellent lo-fi rock ‘n’ rolling, ‘The Fantastic Fur and Kid Chlorine’.

New No York is a quite wonderful comp of post-punk invention and fury and no doubt will be soundtracking my next few weeks.

Steve Stoeckel ‘The Power Of And,’
(Big Stir Records) Available Now

“Oki-dokie” as the great man of the forest once said whilst felling a great bush of yesterday’s misanthropes as they changed their points of view due to the magic of McCartney deeming from his radio. Macca’s gift for melody whispering in their non acclimatised lug holes, they bathed in the aural glory and then caught the forest express to the first independent record store they come across, splashed their money down onto the counter and said give us a McCartney CD. The shop assistant taken aback at being surrounded by forest misanthropes could only stutter in a nervous fashion: “We have no McCartney. In fact we have no Beatles”. (Yes what kind of record store has no Beatles or Macca in it I hear you ask; they did have but a gang of wannabe scousers turning up with nostalgia in their hearts, who bought them all). “But I do have this”, and nervously took out the just arrived new cd from Big Stir recording artist Steve Stoeckel. “He may not be Macca but he lives in the same ballpark” he said placing the disc into the cd player. The forrest misanthropes were knocked sideways by the tuneful beat glory of Steve Stoeckel and somewhat moved by the beauty of Steve’s ballads and bought the fucking lot.

Chris Church ‘Radio Transient’
(Big Stir Records) 24^th March 2023

If Radio Transient was released in the 80s on an American arm of a major record label I would not have been surprised. It is the kind of album I would occasionally stumble across in that decade, in my working in record shop days, the odd gem that was released amongst the dross that American arms of Major record labels used to release on a weekly basis; the odd gem that would make working in a record store worthwhile.

Radio Transient has the slight alternative feel that used to occasionally slip through the net. It has an air of Johnny Marr like tunefulness and jangliness on some of the songs, especially on the opener ‘GCRT’, which has the sublime edginess that the early Smiths had in spades, and ‘Over And Out, which is swathed in Byrds/Smiths Rickenbacker glory.

Radio Transient is in fact a fine radio album no matter what decade we live in as we all know that music is timeless and this album proves the case in point, taking American mid 80s MOR rock and covering it in undenying, loving indie – or should we call it college rock sheen. And if the Warren Zevon like ‘One More Chance To Get Over You’ was released as a single in the 80s, I think Chris Church might have had a hit on his hands.

In a spot of self-publicity, a case of pop eating itself, Brian Bordello is actually an artist in his own right in case you were unaware. His latest wishful thinking paean, Songs For Cilla To Sing, is released through Think Like A Key: