Monolith Cocktail Blog

BRIAN ‘BORDELLO’ SHEA’S REVIEWS ROUNDUP – INSTANT REACTIONS.

The Armoires ‘Octoberland’
ALBUM (Big Stir Records) 11^th October 2024

Octoberland is the second album from The Armoires, or should I call it the Sophomore release as they are American and they call it such over there in the USA, but as I am a cantankerous old northern git from the UK I will call it the second release. Yes, their second album, the follow up to their debut “Incognito”, which if I remember correctly was one of my albums of the year. And Octoberland is another fine album from the band.

What I like about The Armoires is the way they take their influences and meld them into sounding like The Armoires. They take Alt rock 60s jangle guitar and Folk and indie and AOR pop, Psych and country and mould it into a stew of great American beauty. Octoberland is the aural equivalent of spending a sunny autumn day walking in the park with your true love. 

Beauty Stab ‘GUIDE/FRISK’
ALBUM

After a five plus year wait, we have the debut, and who knows, only album from the one time much tipped for big things Beauty Stab. An album filled with sex sleaze and glamour but with a healthy or unhealthy dose of darkness. Ten songs that mine electro/synth pop, Scary Monsters era Bowie and a touch of goth alongside the duo’s own genius layer of pop suss. If “Bring Me The Boy”, a gem of a synth/dance song and the first single from the album, in a remixed form, was released in the 80’s on a major label it would no doubt had been a top ten smash.

The sound and feel of eighties chart land I think has a big influence on Beauty Stab. They do share a name with ABC’s second album after all, and I can almost hear Martin Fry emote over the bass heavy synth pop funk of “Manic”.

“GUIDE/FRISK” is a wonderful and inventive crafted album that celebrates the joy and darkness and power that great pop music can bring to your life and really deserves to be heard by all.

Black Mirage ‘Black Mirage’
ALBUM (Inner Demons Records)

If John Carpenters Halloween was set in the midst of The Power of The Flower hippiedom of 1967 this fine debut album by Black Mirage could well be the soundtrack. A strummed and picked dulcimer emotes beautifully over some quite marvelous drones and whooshes of synth creating a quite beautiful and sometimes eerie montage of aural dulcitude. With Halloween soon approaching, and as the dark early Autumn nights move in, this could well be the ideal musical accompaniment for the rain tapping on your windowpane.   

Black Wick ‘Video/Droned’ 
ALBUM (Ingrown Records)

“Video\Droned” is a 27-track album of computer game pop, found sound magic and tuneful and drifting synth mellow instrumental magic, with the odd [very odd] drone chucked in for good measure. There is something that it totally relaxing about putting on this long and rewarding album, and just closing your eyes and letting the music sooth you into a state of semi consciousness, taking in the experimental magic and letting it wash over you.

The Boy With Perpetual Nervousness ‘Dead Calm’
ALBUM (Bobo Integral Records)

The Boy With Perpetual Nervousness are a delightful sounding chiming guitar band. No more, no less, Dead Calm is an album that evokes the sounds of the three power pop B’s, The Byrds, The Beatles and Big Star, and is really an enjoyable listen. But what tears it apart from albums that plough the same jangle furrow is the quite sublime songwriting and lead vocals, which at times remind me if Teenage Fanclub had they decided to go in cahoots with Jackson Brown and record an album full of L.A. sunshine. A lovely pop album. 

Eurosuite ‘Totally Fine’
ALBUM (Human Worth) 18^th October 2024

Unhinged chaotic angry shouty music with a dark sense of humour still has a place in my life, even at my age I am so pleased to say. And “Totally Fine” by Eurosuite is all the above. It has a madness that brings to mind the much-missed Ceramic Hobs and Whitehouse, and at times The Sleaford Mods. And in 2024 we need a bit of anger to soundtrack these angry mixed up disturbing times. Eurosuite indeed do a fine job of supplying that soundtrack.

Kitchen Cynics & Margery Daw ‘As Those Gone Before’
ALBUM (Cruel Nature Records)

I admit I have a bit of a soft spot for weird, strange folk music, I put it down to watching too much Bagpuss and The Clangers as a toddler: wasn’t the 70’s a wonderful decade to be a child. So, this fine album of weird, strange folk songs is right down my summer pathway stroll of mischievous delight.

Kitchen Cynics & Margery Daw go from the childlike tales of the sinister folk whimsy “Christopher Tadpole” to the dark and cold clawing of “Mole Man“; if you wondered what story time at the nursery school on summer isle might sound like, these gems will answer your wonderings. “The Four Trains That Killed Me” and “Last Of The Little Lost Lambs” are both wonderfully John Cale like in the darkness and utter beauty as much as “Accused Isle” is like listening to a slightly deranged Pam Ayres on the old Radio Luxembourg via an old transister radio under the bed clothes in the darkest of nights [wasn’t the 70’s a wonderful decade to be a child]. “As Those Gone Before” is a true magical gem of off-kilter folk whimsy, an album of true eccentric magnificence. 

Not My Good Arm ‘Coffee’
ALBUM

Who are Not My Good Arm I hear you ponder to yourself as you peruse this DFB [Damn Fine Blog]. Well our dear readers they are a DFB [Damn Fine Band] that hail from Leicester, I think, and are a five piece that produce a hell of a musicality charade.

They take Rock ‘n’ Roll, Ska, Punk and Soul and tie it up and skin it alive whilst berating it with the sort of political soulful joyful nous that hasn’t been heard or witnessed since the Mighty Dexy’s Midnight Runners held the Top Of The Pops viewers enrapt with their explosion of attitude and musical good taste back in the early 80’s. Yes indeed, Coffee is a Northern indie soulful romp of an album by a band that I can imagine being a hell of a good night out to watch and by the looks of it gig on a very regular basis. So, keep your eyes scanned as they may be coming to your locality soon. I understand you can pick up a copy of Coffee on CD from their gigs, as by the looks of it they’ve not yet updated their bandcamp: probably too busy putting the fun into funk. 

The Poppermost ‘I Don’t Want To Know’
SINGLE

The Poppermost are back with another slice of retromania, another slice of ‘I cannot believe it was not recorded in the 60s’. Another fine single, yes indeed. “I Don’t Want To Know” has one wondering, “is this what it would have sounded like if Gilbert O Sullivan had for some reason hired the circa 1966 Kinks to back him”, on this just pre Psych pop frivolity that’s all backwards guitars and Beatle Boots. Another timeless gem.  

Salisman Communal Orchestration ‘Of The Desert’
EP (Cruel Nature Records)

There is something quite mind swaying, something that exports brilliance about this EP. It is a wonderful experimental warm pop dance psych hybrid; like a 60’s garage band being dragged through a vacuum of all musicality that lies ahead in the future. It rocks and rolls like rock ought to roll, but very rarely does in this day and age. I love the way the singer sings “I don’t believe” on the second track “Precipice”, it makes me want to believe in the magic of life again. I love the heartwarming experimental cacophony of “Men Of The Desert” and the all-out beautiful psych of the final track “Friendly Beast”. A quite genius four track EP.

Sassyhiya ‘Boat Called Predator’
SINGLE (Skep Wax)

The lovely sound of rocking indie pop is alive and well it seems with this really, quite catchy little ditty. What I love about it is it actually sounds like a single and not just a track that sounds like an album track released to appear on youtube and Spotify just to let people know that an album will soon be on its way. Yes, I am old fashioned; I remember when singles used to be commercial and released in hope of garnering radio play and such a song a milkman could whistle as he delivered a daily pint…yes, the good old days when a single was a single and not a seven-minute dirge of regret. 

SCHØØL ‘The End’
SINGLE (Géographie)

“The End” is a bit of an indie rock toe tapper; yes, a song one can indeed tap their toes to or even somebody else’s toes if you have their permission. It’s the kind of song you might have heard on snub tv back in the day, all J Masics guitars and slacker vocals saying nothing in particular but still saying it with enough panache to tap your toes to [or somebody else’s]. I’m sure both indie kids and indie pensioners will enjoy the wrap around familiarity of this track. 

Twile (featuring Laura Lehtola) “Hunger Moon”
ALBUM (Cruel Nature Records)

“Hunger Moon” is an album that combines folk, trip-hop, electronica and magic, and weaves together a tapestry of undiluted majestic swoonincity that has not been heard since the Portishead debut album “Dummy”.

Hunger Moon really does not put a foot out of place as it flows and hooks you into its warm strangeness, cradling you and sweeping you up to a safe place where dreams are free to play and cast shadows over your deepest thought and emotions. Eight tracks to soundtrack you as you come down from your highest high. Truly magnificent.