The Monks Kitchen: Title: Music from the Monks Kitchen
Tracks: 16, Website: www.themonkskitchen.co.uk
Label: Wonderfulsound
Having dropped a superlative set of foxy folk flavoured hipster grooves and moves on their 2007 debut, The Wind May Howl, The Monks Kitchen were on their way – or so it appeared. Paul Weller/Noel Gallagher producer Stan Kybert was in the driving seat, the sound was as louche as it was lush, they were on the road with Badly Drawn Boy, playing Glastonbury, recording for the Beeb … in other words at least eight of the whole nine yards.
But then it went quiet. Completely quiet. For six (count ’em!) years.
Until late last year when a hazy daisy version of Sam Cooke’s Shake popped out as a single that nobody but the band themselves was expecting. And now an album, more than half of which is instrumental. Not that it matters. For this is a complete listening experience from beginning to end, the instrumental interludes serve as scene setting for the next vocalised tale of oddity and peculiarity.
Faultlessly melodic, the influences are as likely to arrive from far out in leftfield as they are from the plumb centre of the middle of the road. Thus, dusty cowboy chords giddy up next to Weimar cabaret moves and outback drones make their presence felt behind a grainy Ivor Raymonde string arrangement as apple pie vocal harmonies stretch Stylophone melodies and vintage guitar decoration.
The sound is so lo-fi it’s practically no-fi, but always beautifully presented. The songs exist in the cracks between folk and pop, riffing on gentle themes that don’t always resolve into traditional structures involving verses, choruses and middle eights. The very thing that may frustrate some about Music from the Monks Kitchen – that it’s a bit like spinning through a sketchbook – is actually
its greatest strength.
Only in this context can the musical setting of Poe’s The Raven make sense next to the gossamer weight whisper-thon that is Whirlwind and the jingle jangle Smiths-beat excursion of Bluebird. Hollow of the Night flirts with Spanish eyes, while Instrumental X takes a tango down the main street of Blackgang Chine and I Wanna Go sounds like a long lost Roger McGuinn demo for The Monkees.
Wide-eyed and wondrous in its scope, Music from the Monks Kitchen is a monument to making music without the rulebook and is both literally and metaphorically among the most unexpected albums of the year. BUY HERE!
