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MONKEY POWER TRIO
Hacking Through the Tentacles of
Despair (Pochahontas Swamp Machine)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson
First, the legend: Three ex-high school buddies went drinking one night, got fairly well hammered and made an odd decision. Since one of them was moving out of state, they'd get together in the morning and make a record. Why was that so odd? Only one was a musician, really, and since he played sax, it was a thin foundation for a band. Then the real inspiration hit, the kind of inspiration that can only hit when you're deep in beer-fueled conversation with your best friends. They would take the DIY ethic to heart, record an improvised set of songs, then meet the next year to do it again, then again, and again, no matter how far apart they moved, no matter how old and decrepit they got. Always just one day per year, never more than a few hours of recording. The result? Some of their songs are painful to listen to. Some are shockingly enjoyable. Most are what I'd call wonderfully bad. All have a certain quality that makes them unique and interesting, so much so that an advertising agency tapped one of their songs, "You Gotta Have Hope," for an unforgettable commercial. No one saw THAT coming!
Hacking Through the Tentacles of Despair is the ninth 7-inch EP by the band, which has grown into a quintet over the years, and despite the fact that they've been playing together for just about a decade, they don't sound like other bands with that kind of longevity. I suppose that's because they've really only been playing together for something like 30 hours, if you took a calculator to all the spare minutes.
They claim not to spend much time working on their instruments during the rest of the year, but I suspect they're fibbin' a bit. There's a big difference in the playing between the first record and this one, though they still love to mess around with painful sounds, like the recorder in "The Robot Woman Meets the Monster Man," which teams up with Mark Maynard's off-key vocal to torture your brain. It's over so fast you're still deciding whether or not to skip the song, and you're just catching on to the humor of it when the sonically superior "Butt Science" begins. They've certainly got more than one sound, and one of the most fascinating is their trippin' 'n' groovin' mode. "Butt Science" is, at its core, disco so sloppy and loose it becomes psychedelia, aided by a guitar with tremolo set on stun and Maynard's zombie-like, spoken vocal.
The B-side opens with a twisted tune that feel a little like "Atlantis" on ludes, if Donovan had wanted to teach the world to sing... a-tonally. And yet that's just a warm up for "UFO," a song structured so loosely and sung with such contempt for conventional "notes" that it's slightly dizzying to hear. Definitely psychedelic, it creates it's own counter-swirl when the drum beat and the strumming (I think it's a ukulele) part ways and then meet again. Not for everyone, but certainly a dandy snack for the MPT faithful. This 2003 effort is not their best record, but it does contain the elements one wants to hear from them, and "Butt Science" is up there with their best tunes. As I understand it, the 2004 session has already taken place and the record will be out soon. That'll be the 10th release from a band with one of the most interesting stories in music, an unlikely gathering of guys now in middle age who are still as punk as it gets. 1) "The Robot Woman Meets the Monster Man" 2) "Butt Science" 3) "TV" 4) "UFO"
[This vinyl EP can be purchased at www.monkeypowertrio.com]
© 2004 - DJ Johnson