Manchester’s unsung masters of DIY, Monster Island, keep on knocking out albums at a rate generally associated with, er, Manchester’s renowned masters of DIY, The Fall. There are definite musical similarities between the two as well, but while recent years have seen MES and crew pursue a cleaner sound a more overtly rock angle, Monster Island are all about the wonky, the ramshackle and the staunchly anti-commercial.
The result is a spectacularly idiosyncratic and off-kilter set of songs that bounce and lean in all directions, sometimes at once.
The discordant cacophony of ‘Lancaster House’ sounds like a collision of The Fall and early Gallon Drunk. ‘So stick your fingers in the hinges’ goes the sneering refrain. A driving, distorted bass drives the noisy ‘Fag Packet Mathematics’ and the title alone is an indicator of the off the cuff approach to lyrical and musical planning, while also representing their typically Mancunian slant on life in general.
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The drawling ‘Inner Ring Road #2’ may have echoes of ‘Middle Class Revolt’ but builds to a surging, stomping climax, while the swiping social commentary of the rickety punk rock of ‘Brandnotman’ is, if anything, more Dead Kennedys than Fall.
Unpretentious yet oblique and angular in every which way, ‘The House of Lancaster’ deserves to become a cult classic. It won’t, of course, but that’s life.
Monster Island Online
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