Our Daily Bread 357: Pink Chameleons, The Membranes, Prophecy Playground and New Art School
December 20, 2019
REVIEWS
Words: Brian Bordello
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea joined the Monolith Cocktail team in January 2019. 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 recently through Metal Postcard Records with the paean to local record shop single, ‘Dormouse Records’. They’ve also just released their seasonal dirge, ‘Christmas Morn‘.
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 Membranes ‘Nocturnal’
EP/29th November 2019
Post punk originators [their description] The Membranes return with a angular piece of synth darkwave melodrama, the kind Soft Cell used to offer up in a damn fine fashion many years ago and the kind Vukovar piss out quite brilliantly nowadays. This strange EP for some reason has me picturing Scooby Doo dancing with ghosts at a high school prom: the soundtrack to a horror film nobody wants to watch.
New Art School ‘My Band’
(Metal Postcard Records)
Single/3rd December 2019
A song somewhat indebted to the ‘Clash City Rockers’ guitar riff, which is indeed a good thing; a track that struts and stutters in teenage delight; a song that delights in youth and self celebratory joy of being in a band; a song that takes me back to the days of cold rehearsal rooms and badly formed bar chords; yet another piece of single magic from the New Art School.
Prophecy Playground ‘Politely Polluting’
Single
A beautiful toe dip into the waters of melancholia; a Nick Drake foray unto the dying embers of the sun; the kind of track Ben & Jason use to thrive in making, all wonderfully arranged strings and a softly picked acoustic track. Should we call it early seventies psych folk? Yes we shall. And what a beautiful early seventies psych folk it is too.
Pink Chameleons ‘Songs’
(Soliti) EP/13th December 2019
Modern Garage band rock n roll, what’s not to like. It’s maybe not the most original of genres but anyone out there who enjoys The Brian Jonestown Massacre and BRMC and bands of their ilk will love this six track EP of storming rock n roll – well five, with a rather beautiful mid sixties stones like ballad lovingly placed in the middle and my favorite of the six, although the last track, a fine slightly weird Fuzztones like rocker, is also highly recommended.
Quarterly Playlist 2019: Part Three: Snapped Ankles, Danny Brown, Trupa Trupa, Matana Roberts, Repo-Man…
September 26, 2019
Playlist
Compiled by Dominic Valvona with contributions from Matt Oliver, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea, Andrew C. Kidd and Gianluigi Marsibilio.
Graphics by Gianluigi Marsibilio.
Reflecting the Monolith Cocktail’s tastes and favourite choice tracks from the last few months, the Quarterly Revue is a diverse musical journey; an eclectic international playlist of discoveries. This is a space in which you are as likely to find the skewered Gary Wilson meets Brian Wilson stained-glass psychedelic songwriting of the Origami Repetika creative hub as you are the conscious transportive jazz of Horace Tapscott. Brand new tracks appear alongside reissues and recently uncovered nuggets as we move through funk, jazz, hip-hop, post-punk, shoegaze, desert blues, techno, psychedelic, acid rock, space rock, and the most experimental of musical genres.
Behold…part three…
Tracklist::
Snapped Ankles ‘Three Steps To A Development’
DJ Shadow ‘Rosie’
Kid Acne/Nosaj/Spectacular Diagnostics ‘Crest Of A Wave’
Gang Starr/J. Cole ‘Family and Loyalty’
Danny Brown ‘Best Life’
Bronx Slang ‘More Grief’
SAULT ‘Let Me Go’
clipping. ‘Nothing Is Safe’
Bloke Music ‘Everything On’
Seaside Witch Coven ‘Splutter’
Trupa Trupa ‘Remainder’
Stereo Total ‘Einfach’
Los Piranas ‘Palermo’s Grunch’
Baba Zula ‘Salincak In’
Abdallah Oumbadougou ‘Thingalene’
Grup Dogus ‘Namus Belasi’
Taichmania ‘See Ya at Six or Seven’
Kota Motomura ‘Cry Baby’
Baby Taylah ‘Reclaim’
House Of Tapes ‘Melted Ice’
Camino Willow ‘Hollywood’
Callum Easter ‘Only Sun’
Junkboy ‘Waiting Room’
Elizabeth Everts ‘Contraband’
Bloom de Wilde ‘Soul Siren’
Badge Epoque Ensemble ‘Milk Split on Eternity’
Chrissie Hynde/The Valve Bone Woe Ensemble ‘Meditation on a Pair of Wire Cutters’
Swan/Koistinen ‘Diagnosis’
Sirom ‘Low Probability of a Hug’
Koma Saxo ‘Fanfarum for Komarun’
Matana Roberts ‘Raise Yourself Up/Backbone Once More/How Bright They Shine’
Die Achse/Ghostface Killah/Agent Sasco ‘Baby Osamas’
U-Bahn ‘Beta Boyz’
Occult Character ‘Half-Wits and Cultists’
Asbestos Lead Asbestos ‘Shrimp Asmr’
Repo-Man ‘Evan The Runt’
Issac Birituro & The Rail Abandon ‘Kalba’
Nicolas Gaunin ‘Vava’u’
Mazouni ‘Daag Dagui’
Mdou Moctar ‘Wiwasharnine’
Aziza Brahim ‘Leil’
Resavoir ‘Resavoir’
Purple Mountains ‘All My Happiness is Gone’
Babybird ‘Cave In’
Adam Green ‘Freeze My Love’
Catgod ‘Blood’
Frog ‘RIP to the Empire State Flea Market’
Pozi ‘Engaged’
Roi ‘Dormouse Records’
Origami Repetika ‘Winged Creatures’
Horace Tapscott ‘Future Sally’s Time’
A Journey Of Giraffes ‘September 11 1977’
Jodie Lowther ‘The Cat Collects’
Equinox/Vukovar ‘Lament’
Kandodo 3 ‘King Vulture’
Single Review
Words: Dominic Valvona
Roi ‘Dormouse Records/Straight Outta Southport’
(Metal Postcard Records) 25th August 2019
Though it’s never stopped anyone else, and most music writers’ side hustles include making music and PR, it would still seem incredibly self-promotional for our maverick-in-residence Brian ‘Bordellos’ Shea to review and publicize his own record. So I’m going to do it for him instead.
Dropping singles, albums and miscellaneous detritus like the most candid, cynical of therapy sessions, Brian, as patriarchal cult leader of St. Helens’ most ramshackle miscreant underground heroes The Bordellos, wages a daily battle with the music industry and, well, society in general. He does all this of course shadowed by an extended cast of Shea family members and anyone stoned, deranged or bored enough to have happened across one of the impromptu legendary late night recording sessions. With a gift equally as spot-on and part of the cultural fabric of shitty Britain as Half Man Half Biscuit, Brian and his troupe have found profound wry humour in the darkest of subjects. True outsiders, they’ve forged a career out of misery with a lo fi ascetic that makes The Fall sound as if they’d been produced by Phil Spector.
Of on one of his many tangents, Brian teams up with long-suffering bandmate and offspring Dan (doing grand and promising things with Vukovar and the burgeoning Beauty Stab) and John McCarthy to create his newest project, Roi. The first single from this new turn salvages both a lost Bordellos plaint from the brilliant (one of our albums of the year) 2014 LP Will. I. Am, You’re Really Nothing, and hones a slurged dissonance to a mate’s record shop. The latter of those, ‘Dormouse Records’, is a deranged paean to the vinyl stockist of Brian’s dreams. Memories, inconsequential to some, and rites-of-passages are marked by a litany of favourite records as Brian wistfully rummages through the racks of a less cunty, less surly version of the High Fidelity record store vision. It often sounds like two completely separate tracks/ideas playing simultaneously; the intermittent synthesized rumbles and noise bleeding into the main jangly melodic rhythm of the main song.
Almost as a sort of grudge against Bordellos stalwart Ant, a new version of the 2014 kiss-me-quick, misty-eyed ballad to love in a Mersey seaside town, ‘Straight Outta Southport’ replaces Brian’s sibling’s original parts with those of McCarthy’s. Losing none of its lo fi heart rendering beauty in the process, there’s perhaps a slightly more distorted and forlorn edge on this recreation: Roi covering The Bordellos as it were; truly pop will eat itself.
Even though 6Music, The Guardian, uncut and their ilk talk and feature/pick-up on what the Monolith Cocktail was already raving about months ago, The Bordellos remain a cult, but very influential, missive waiting to happen. They’re too good for us anyway; we don’t deserve them. But some recognition wouldn’t go amiss in the wider press and industry (I make apologies to similar sized-ventures and radio shows that have been championing them like ourselves). Roi is just another example of that unassuming, unaided-thoughts aloud talent.
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