Written by: Dave Cantrell
So, there are these threads. They come in varying strengths and lengths and tend to tangle at will but invariably, being the product of our own individual unraveling, somehow at some juncture they begin to weave themselves into their own sinuous shapes that we can each of us track back to that moment when whichever particular strand began. Now, to be sure, most of said threads peter out without fanfare somewhere along the inescapably weird and windy path our lives take us on never to be seen again. Others, though, due as much as anything to that impish agent of change serendipity, come winding back into our lives with an insistence that suggests they, one, never actually left, and two, are in fact of such an essential part of the very warp and weft of our existence that imagining life without them is a bit too unsettling to contemplate. And whereas I hadn’t intended this intro and nearly all that follows to be quite so intensely interlaced with the personal the fact is that, insofar as the very essence of a musical obsession now stepping in to its sixth decade is concerned, few artists/bands hew more tightly to its very core than The Monochrome Set. Here’s why…
Setting: the street-level bedrom of a Victorian-era rental at the corner of Haste and Fulton in Berkeley mid-September 1979. It being the beginning of yours truly’s amphetamine phase he has the good – or, OK, convenient at least – luck to have as one of his roommates a student attending uni who in turn happens to have a good friend who’s a chem major with full and easy access to all the ingredients needed to concoct the cleanest speed I’ll ever encounter, a fact I happen to mention to a co-worker at the one-stop¹ I’m working at who in (another) turn has as his roommate a woman named Victoria that I’d met at Magazine’s first show at the Old Waldorf a couple weeks earlier and who on this particular evening has arrived to procure said substance and while there’s a whole helluva lot to that story (as an example, my go-to description of Victoria has long been “She was the only person I’ve ever met who’d seen both the Beatles last ever live performance and the Sex Pistols final live appearance so I married her!”) the relevant detail here is that earlier that same day I had, per the NME‘s recommendation, bought the latest 45 from the Monochrome Set “Eine Symphonie des Grauens” (backed with “Lester Leaps In”) which, though very familiar with the band, Vic hadn’t heard yet and thus that song has long served as a mnemonic soundtrack to what could arguably be considered the pivotal moment in a young life that, as reflected in this run-on sentence, was essentially cartwheeling from one crucial moment to the next at breakneck speed (no pun intended) and should anyone wonder why The Monochrome Set’s resurrection in the early twenty-teens had such an impact on me (aside from the plain fact of how consistently great they’ve been), well, now you may wonder not and we can, shall we say, cross the Lotus Bridge and move on, which, as it transpires, is actually an imperative, as indicated by the first voice we hear here (or voices, so to speak, the source being a multi-tracked guest vocalist – and frequent TMS contributor – Alice Healey) luring us forward with the simple but irresistible refrain “Come and join us” and whereas we don’t know about you – though you should certainly take heed – we here at SEM don’t need to be invited twice and in fact that opening (title) track, skipping dextrously along as if the word ‘jaunty’ had had a bit too much espresso this morning, could not help but persuade even the most stubbornly reticent. Thenceforth, off we cavort, gem by intrepid, deeply pop-intelligent gem.
From “Diaphonous,” nimbly string-laden, alluring, seemingly effortless, Andy Warren’s bass quietly, quite steadily, anchoring (as always) an arrangement that flirts, however modestly, with lofty cinematic heights and, really, right there, the extraordinary, seemingly effortless balancing of elements this band has long perfected (not least in the current form given the simpatico rhythms from Warren’s drumming foil Stephen Gilchrist), by now so expected as to really need no mention, is on its usual full display – thanks in no small part to Athen Ayren – which is to say ‘Welcome, again, to the TMS world of subtle superlatives.’ Be it the vibes lightly bejewelling “The Abomination of Hubert” (song title of the year? Well, maybe; hard to imagine anything beating it) that immediately follows, lending the song a, um, vibe that swings from the fifties to the twenty-twenties; “Athanatoi” that, aside from being this writer’s newest entry into his ‘Bestest TMS Tracks Ever’ list (a not short document as might be guessed), barrels adroitly along, its multiple elements blending with something of an immortal ease – appropriate given its title – that in trun bleeds seamlessly into the lithe near funky-like swing of “Leander” (its title lyric’s question being “Leander, do you ever sleep?” one that we think could be reasonably asked of the band themselves) that in turn cedes the floor to the slo-mo flamenco/spy movie lure – trust us on this – that is “Map of the Night Sky” displaying a level of pop suavity that is nonetheless so almost-casually intelligent and approachable that, were it to manifest into personhood you’d really want to hang out with, down to “Our Sweet Souls” carrying us to the end of the Lotus Bridge and is as lucid a paean to the prospects of an elegiac departure from this spinning and often conf0unding orb of existence as could possibly by hoped for and were someone to ask us if there could be any band or musician better suited to the task we’d have no choice but to look at them as if they’d mayby gone a bit barmy.
OK, so…how that the worthiness of this latest from the world’s most ageless band has, once again, been established beyond all reasonables what’s left but our undying gratitude that this thread of all threads continues to unravel in its ever-delightful, ever-inimitable fashion. Raise a glass, dear reader, and join us in a toast: “Here’s to the joy of unraveling!”
[pick up your digital copy of Lotus Bridge on the ‘label of labels’ Tapete here]
