The Monsieurs – The Monsieurs
Black Gladiator / Slovenly Recordings
October 28th, 2014

What It Sounds Like:  Submerging your head in a tar pit fuzz box at the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance on November 12th, 1955.

Alright, alright, we’re probably a little early for that.  The 60’s were still a couple years away.  But if Marty McFly and Marvin Berry would have dropped acid on that fateful night and then walked up to Biff and creamed him with a baseball bat instead of a fist (and then later coerced him to join their band), The Monsieurs may have been the result a couple years down the road.

Geez, this is dirty and soaked in distortion.  It’s a snowplow in a cesspool filled with sludge, poodle skirts, and demented swagger.  Andy Macbain is the lone source of testosterone here as he howls through about fifteen layers of mud to reach the surface of the earth in this black and white, checkered floor recording studio from hell, and he sounds hungry.  For meat.  For blood.  For something that just can’t be quenched, despite all the sacrificial finger slicing that Hilken Mancini is trying to serve him on her 6-string, and Erin King is trying to pound out of her bones on her elaborate, twelve piece set.

You’re kidding me right?  Of course I am!  That guitar has one string, and it plays heavy chord after heavy chord.  That set has two ratted out Rogers and a cymbal that you can practically see the spiderwebs flying off of.  Headbanger and J The Rip are sure to make those eight-legged critters scamper for the holes in the wall, with all the incessant pounding that doesn’t let up, even seeing the clock on the wall read 3:00AM.  But for all the dirt that they’re tracking around, tracks like Young Gun and Falun Gong may get them back out onto the dance floor to crawl up the legs of unsuspecting, aforementioned poodle skirt wearers dancing with the cigarette smoking, biker boys in wearwolf masks.  But don’t get me wrong – It’s pop, pop, and more pop that holds the backdrop to The Monsieurs, and if The Ronettes would have been hanging out with creatures like this back in the 60s when they released the likes of Be My Baby….I mean, my goodness – can you imagine the opening of Dirty Dancing?  Patrick Swayze would have taken one look and Jennifer Gray, and the whole film would have turned into some seedy, art flick that could have only been shown in in a run down, “B Movie” theater on a street where Carol would have explicitly told Marcia Brady, “Don’t walk down that street.”

I’m a few years too late for that reference.  That’s fine.  The Monsieurs took a trip on a time machine and brought us this mess of girl-group, lo-fi fuzz punk, so I’m feeling pretty content.  It fits me just fine when the moods strikes, and what it does, Dirty Rat comes in and takes my head off.  If it isn’t; hey, no sweat….

I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet.  But your kids are gonna love it.

(I had to)

6.5/10

If you had to listen to two tracks:  Dirty Rat / Young Gun