Monolith Cocktail Blog

Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea’s Reviews Roundup – Instant Reactions. All entries in alphabetical order.

Alien Eyelid ‘Vinegar Hill’
Album (Tall Texan) 5^th September 2025

Psychedelic country-soul is a rather beautiful thing, especially when performed with such heart and soul. Alien Eyelid have a wonderful laidback all-consuming warmth with a hint of baroque-ness that at times remind me of the wonderful Left Banke, especially on beautiful psychedelic ballad “Blue”. The title track “Vinegar Hill” could have walked straight from Basement Tapes with its Dylan and The Band feel, until it goes all early King Crimson on us, and is one of those rare things, a ten-minute track that does not overstay its welcome.

This Alien Eyelid debut is a gem of an album, and one of the finest things I have had pleasure to listen to this year. 

The Beths ‘Straight Line Was A Lie’
Album (ANTI-)

I seem to be writing a lot about indie guitar music at the moment; there has certainly been an influx of the stuff appearing in my inbox and long may it continue if it is all of the quality of this quite lovely album of guitar indie pop/rock. The Beths of course write songs of verve and heart, and this new album is no different. Straight Line Was A Lie is an album ram jammed with catchy choruses and heartfelt lyrics all wrapped in fine melody and radio friendly hooks and jangly guitar chimes, as all good indie pop/rock should.

Eamon The Destroyer ‘The Maker’s Quilt’
Album (Bearsuit Records)

You can never be disappointed when a new release by Bearsuit Records appears. There is always a tinge of adventure, as you know it is going to be a trip hop and skip and a jump of musical exploration. The Maker’s Quilt is no exception; an album that brings together dance, psych, 60’s like spy soundtracks with a tinge of folk and rock/pop… all sometimes in the same song. At times it reminds me of what the Wicker Man soundtrack might have sounded like if it was set in the late 80’s early 90’s in a village just outside Manchester when the acid house explosion was happening. There is a joy and a magic and a melancholy madness that is just impossible to resist and resist you shouldn’t. 

Frog ‘Bitten By My Love Version XI’
Single taken from Album The Count (Audio Antihero) 19^th September 2025

“Bitten By My Love” is a rather lovely single, but what else could you expect from the marvellous Frog. Six minutes of undiluted late summer breeze love, a heavenly stroll through the textures of late-night radio; a song that sends my mind spinning back to the days when songs like this would haunt and confuse and engross in equal measures. A sexual healing for the social misfit. 

The Jack Rubies ‘Are We Being Recorded’
Single (Big Stir Records) 19^th September 2025

I don’t think I have written about any releases on Big Stir Records for a while. So here I am putting it right, for here we have the new single by The Jack Rubies, a band that once again takes me back to my youth. The days when I spent the hours of 9 to 5.30 working (or not working) in various record stores, and I remember The Jack Rubies album Fascination Vacation being unloved and unsold in the record racks, which is a shame as I remember it being not a bad record. And thirty-seven years down the line here I am listening to the latest release by same band. And how little changes for once again it is indeed not a bad record and sounds like it could have well been released back in the days when the pubs shut at eleven o’ clock. It has the air of a record that thinks a lot of itself, and that always appeals to me…call me strange. Link (no examples available yet to hear).

Ike Goldman ‘Kiki Goldman In How I Learned To Sing For Statler And Waldorf’
Album, 10^th September 2025

I love this album so much that I’ve just bought a copy on CD: do I need say more. Well, I will, apart from it having the best album title I have come across in a long time, it’s such a lovely beautifully happy/sad album full of melancholy and magic. It may be the closest one can get to rediscovering the joy of The Beach Boys Friends and Smiley Smile era without actually listening to the said albums. Plus, anyone who mentions Stephen Sondheim in his influences is certainly someone who deserves giving a listen to, and once you have given a listen to downloading or streaming or buying his CD.

Noisy ‘Grenadine’
Single

“Grenadine” is a song that is swathed in a beautiful melancholy, a melody that will haunt and play bellringers pontoon with your heart; a pure and unadorned example of why pop music can save your life and make even the bad times bearable. One of the only plus points about growing old is that you have the joy and innocence of your youth to look back on, and this single brings that joy flooding back with a tearful smile and fading caress. 

Pelts ‘Swimming’
Single (Fika Recordings) 10^th September 2025

Here we are again with a track of post-punk indie-guitar-pop: Am I becoming a man who only reviews indie post punk guitar meanderings? Am I revisiting my teenage years of being totally enamoured with the indie scene of the 80s, or is it just that I am being sent loads of fine new alternative guitar pop/rock? Well probably a bit of all the aforementioned. For the Pelts ‘Swimming’ is indeed a fine tuneful guitar thrust of angular melodious alternative pop skew wifferty (not to be confused with 60’s psych cult band Skip Bifferty). Yes indeed, another fine track and one you will find on their forthcoming 4-track EP, released on the excellent Fika Recordings label. So, seek and buy my old chums or forever hold somebody else’s codpiece. 

SCHØØL ‘I Think My Life Has Been OK’
Album (GEOGRAPHIE)

There are a few questions this debut album throws up. One, are they a French band that sings in English? So do they, in rehearsals, talk to each other in French and then sing the songs in English or to get in the mood? Or do they talk in English? Also, when they play in France, do they sing the songs in French or English? Apart from those burning questions this is actually a quite catchy album of alt guitar rock/pop and very late eighties and early 90’s indie rock: early Blur, Ride, Chapterhouse and the like all spring to mind. I would certainly advise any indie guitar music fans out there to give this a listen, as it is very good indeed.

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