Monolith Cocktail Blog

Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea’s Reviews Roundup – Instant Reactions

The Pennys

Ayarwhaska ‘Dendritas Oscilantes’
Album (Buh Records) 11^th April 2025

This album is noisy. It is chaotic. It is fun. It has an experimental vigour that should be applauded. The first track is called “XXX Speed Grindcore” and lasts 52 seconds and is the kind of thing John Peel would fill in 52 seconds of his show with. There are guitar riffs aplenty, ones that would make Billy Childish weep with joy. There are off-kilter vocal forays into electronic noise, feedback aplenty and the sound of someone clearing their throat. If this is what Peruvian Punk Rock sounds like please send me a Box Set. 

NOTE: Presently no examples of the music available until release. Visit the Buh label bandcamp page.

The Conspiracy ‘Rainbow Prism’
Single (Metal Postcard Records) 13^th March 2025

There is an old British psychedelic magic about ‘Rainbow Prism’ that should be celebrated by the current ever expanding psych fraternity. And the only reason I can think of why it isn’t, is because they have not heard it. For it has all the great qualities of British psych, and if this track was released on say Fruits De Mer Records, The Conspiracy would be all over Record Collector and Shindig and getting airplay from late night BBC 6 music: attention The Conspiracy deserves.

Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera ‘Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera (Remaster Reissue)’
Album (Think Like A Key Records) 25^th April 2025

What we have here is not a new band. No, I have made an exception to the rule of only reviewing new music to review this wonderful reissue of the Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera’s self-titled, and only, album from 1968 (I think) reissued on the wonderful Think Like A Key Records.

It is quite a marvellous album full of mellotrons, sitars and screaming like psych rock guitars and a quite marvellously busy bassist that has to be heard to be believed. This is really a must have for any fans of 60’s psych or music lovers who want to get the aural feel of life in late 60’s swinging London.

NOTE: Presently no examples of the music available until release, but you can find or order the album here

Occult Character ‘Party Heaven’
Album (Metal Postcard Records) 4^th April 2025

Party Heaven is an eight-track mirage of deranged emotional psychosis; a Party Platter of unhinged outpourings of electro-punk. Yes, Occult Character is back with eight short tracks that confuses and delights in equal measure; songs that captures the ugliness of modern life, painting a dark picture but with a huge pink lipstick smile scrawled all over it. Madness and Magic at its most extreme.

The Pennys ‘Say Something’
Track/Video

A song of pure sweetness and sadness; a lovely jangle guitar Odyssey of lo-fi home recorded indie bliss. A track worthy of the golden days of jangle pop when Subway supplied darn fine tooting slices of indie pop melancholy and not overpriced sandwiches. Album to follow this summer.

Poundland ‘Can’t Stop’
Album (Cruel Nature Records) 28^th March 2025

You can lose yourself in a abattoir of current events, open the newspaper, open twitter or X or whatever it is called nowadays, read the news listen to the news watch the fucking news and you are overcome, overwhelmed with the sinking feeling of life in its most horrible reality. In this time of being on the brink of world war 3 and lost in the everyday mundanity of the 9 to 5 life or the hoping to get onto the mundanity of the 9 to 5 life just so you can get away from your bloody job coach and the latest nonstarter of training course you have to attend, its only three buses there and three buses back and there is a chance no matter how slight that they will keep you on in a full time position as a general dogsbody until they discard you when a much more viable and cost cutting option comes along. Poundland are the soundtrack to this life; they are the suppliers of the modern British folk song but not the hey diddly dee bounce your child on your knee with your finger in your ear type folk song, they are writing about street life for the everyday working class. They write songs about the everyday experience. They write about how the littlest thing can make a difference – like how the thought of the flapjack in your pocket can lift the mundanity of your working day – and the banality of tv, but not set to acoustic guitar and fiddle but the dense sound of noise or the simple drumbeat and the confusion, the feedback of the distorted guitar and bass: lo-fi punk at its best.

Poundland are one of the finest and important bands in the UK today, and capture the essence of true life in Britain in 2025 in all its ugly lack of glory.

Smellsofwitches ‘Bride of Fistula’
Single 28^th March 2025

Brides Of Fistula is the debut release from new Wigan outfit, the wonderfully named Smellsofwitches. And it is a strange fish of a track, all experimental improvised glory but with a marvellously warm texture and feel. It may not have a melody that one can hum along to but is all the more fascinating and bewitching for that very reason.

SUE ‘Get Over’
Single

This is actually rather good, a throwback to those days of flannel shirts and The Late Show being dedicated to those pesky grunge bands from the good old US of A. And indeed, this track by Sue would not be out of place on that show: all angst vocals and heavy guitars. This could do very well, or would have 30 odd years ago.

Toxic Chicken ‘Mentally Sound’
Album (Earthrid) 16^th April 2025

Let’s be honest, the only thing musically mentally sound about the great Toxic Chicken is the title of this album, as we in the know all know Toxic is one of the great musical eccentrics that live in the underground occasionally releasing mostly instrumental forays into the psych of electronica. And this wonderful album is an aural stroll through a strange Forrest as the sun goes down. Tracks that bewitch and amuse, entertain in equal measure. Songs that trip and drip through the mind, a relaxing frenzy of the old adage that a bird in the bush is a better than the bird in the freezer, or something similar that really is not too similar at all, and that is the perfect description of the works of The Toxic Chicken. For it sounds like electronica; it feels like electronica; but there is just something there that makes it much more. It has a slight dark ember of a twisted foray into the thinking of a musical maverick; an index into the mind of the closest thing the world of electronica has to Syd Barrett. Mentally Sound is indeed extremely sound but in the most magically unsound way.

Vesch ‘Passport’
Album (Incompetence Records) 11^th April 2025

Art-Punk Cabaret is how Vesch describe themselves, and I’m not going to argue with that. For what we have is an enjoyable foray into a land where Xray Spex and The Teardrop Explodes and Lena Lovich rule the radio, as at different times the band remind me of all three. Maybe late seventies post punk and early eighties pop is what is in vogue in Russia at the moment, as that is where Vesch hail from.

Passport is an album made up of off-kilter and extremely enjoyable unusual inventive pop music. It may not be to everybody’s taste but is certainly to mine.