Monkey Power Trio - House of the Mechanical Sun
(released by Pocahontas Swamp Machine Records - 2007)
2/5
When I received a copy of this record, it was encased in a morphed up Hall and Oates record, which really
made my day. Listening to the record, you can see the kind of people that would think that was funny (which is
a good thing). It sounds like the boys in Monkey Power Trio are listening to a lot of lo-fidelity records and
obviously enjoy themselves with instruments like recorders and....crumhorns.
Basically it is a joke band full of
humorous songs, and the jokes are probably better than the music at this point. Still, every song is listenable (if
only because 3 minutes would be an epic length for these guys) and several of them work.
See, the first side of
the record was recorded a year prior to the second and it is very noticeable - the songs on side 2 beat side one
any day. On the first side, "Hop on the Monkey Bus" is the only real keeper, kind of a hodgepodge of joke band
sing-a-longs that holds it's own against any of its genre. Side 2 contains the albums best songs, "Mechanical
Sun" (with lyrics about luring a female out to live with the main man because he'll have a chicken, so they'll have
eggs) and "Panic Attack", which both point that this band has a great potential.
From this record, I hope to hear
more form these guys. They have a silly style humor that points that even though they say they are a trio, there
just might be five members or that say they recorded in Minnesota and Oregon, they just might be lying. The
record is maybe...17 minutes long or something, so it is just a start and it gets the point across that the band
can definitely go places. If they can obtain an attention span of more than 5 minutes that is....
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