Monarch - If Children; Stream The Album, Download MP3 of "Warning"

The duo of Andy Stack and Jenn Wasner make up Monarch, making their mark on Baltimore's indie music scene in the year since their formation by layering catchy pop hooks with feedback to form a shoegaze that alternates between minimalistic sparseness and a cacophonic instrument salad.

Last week marked the release of Monarch's debut LP If Children (available now from Morphius Distribution). Monarch thrives on using feedback to seamlessly push songs like "Orchard Fair" through an electric chorus. Jenn Wasner wins when she starts breathily and almost incoherently melodizing over a loose piano hook on "Keeping Company".

While Monarch find themselves in a genre known for layering sound on sound, tracks like the just mentioned "Keeping Company" and its country-twinged follow-up, "A Lawn To Mow", are spare, unassuming, and magical. While Wasner leads on the former, Andy Stack takes the microphone on the latter, giving us a chance to hear the two separate and in their own space. Vocal harmonies have their place on the record, but it's a fresh breath to hear these multi-instrumentalists sing for their supper apart from one another.

About three minutes in, "If Children Were Wishes" takes off for the stratosphere, with Wasner's voice projecting strong and proud over the fast-picking guitar. A massively proportioned track, showing in full view one of the reasons Monarch is known for packing a lot of sound in their small footprint.

If Children mingles in a room full of shoegaze, alt-country, folk, and noise, shaking hands, kissing cheeks, and making friends with everyone. Perhaps friends of any of these genres should seek an introduction.

Stream the whole album or purchase Monarch's If Children

Free MP3: Monarch - "Warning" from If Children

Album Review: Puttanesca - Puttanesca

Following up on Any Given Tuesday's review of the Unknown Instructors recent release, The Master's Voice (available now from Morphius Records), I recently received a copy of another Joe Baiza project: Puttanesca (Catasonic Records). Along with Guitar Joe, Puttanesca is Weba Garretson on vocals, Wayne Griffin on drums, and Ralph Gorodetsky on bass (all three gentlemen being part of Universal Congress Of).

Recorded roughly a decade ago and shelved for various reasons, the album is finally available in its raw, unadulterated, no overdubs glory. Blending the free form of jazz, the dischord and aggression of punk, the eclecticism of Joe Baiza and Weba Garretson's electrifying and liberated lyrics, Puttanesca is a saucy dish full of spice. Don't be fooled by the sultry opening of "Shift", because the electric guitar kicks in and the lyrics, well, you'll realize this isn't your parent's jazz.

Puttanesca bombards with Baiza's signature guitar and rumbling, rocks-falling-off-mountain drums, throughout 10 tracks of original material before settling on one cover: Captain Beefheart's "Lick My Decals Off, Baby", ironically chosen, I'll venture, as part of Garretson's feminist expression of sensuality. "Shiny Red Box" is a smooth cabaret number with groovy guitar underlied with baritone sax.

Expect to be challenged by Puttanesca, which requires an adventurous taste just as its namesake would.



Purchase Puttanesca at CDBaby.

Album Review: Coffinberry - God Dam Dogs

From Lakewood, Ohio, Coffinberry make rock and roll. And it is pretty good rock and roll. It's the kind of rock and roll we would have heard at Lollapalooza's side stage in 1994. Controlled use of effects and feedback in the guitars, and vocals that remind me of Cop Shoot Cop's Tod A., but maybe an octave or so higher. Unlike the band I refer to, which wrote dense songs with thick bass and a heavier bent, Coffinberry writes songs (mostly clocking in at just over two minutes) that have a pop sensibility. "Sonogram" is a good sample, a dissonant guitar tune, abruptly short, but absurdly enjoyable.

The track that opens the album, "Packrat/Survivalist", kicks it off with a power chord riff and introduces an album that is in its entirety rock-radio friendly. "Freeway Ends" is a screamer track with Superchunk guitar and drums and blissfully jagged vocals, reviving a sound that has been long missing from the rock scene.

If you're a fan of short, simple, infectious alternative rock, Coffinberry is what you've been waiting for. The songs are catchy, aggressive, and do away with the overdone masking of using production to hide a lack of musicianship. With God Dam Dogs, Coffinberry has given alt-rock fans honest-to-goodness music with no pretentiousness.

Free MP3 Download: "Freeway Ends"

God Dam Dogs is available from Morphius Records.