Review

At their best, Mono sound like latter-day Mogwai, i.e. basically on auto-pilot but not that offensive. But then the keyboards come in, the distortion comes on, and suddenly they sound like Mogwai gleefully soundtracking a spoof film called something like Sword of Truth (in fact, in places this is so overblown it sounds like Manowar, who would do a real good job on that soundtrack). This is Mono’s fifth album, and the dynamics (that is to say, the bits when it gets loud) are so depressingly predictable you can almost hear them saying, “We can’t get away with this again, can we? Ah, hell with it.” ’Everlasting Light’, the closing track, looks like rescuing the record with a wonderful and seemingly never-ending guitar line, but when the orchestra comes in (!) it’s all undone and we’re back to pointless bombast. The big bits are ‘impressive’ in the same way that Godspeed You Black Emperor! might have been if they’d been signed to Sony and used to work in insurance.

Side note: Steve Albini recorded this, and GY!BE’s last record. It was pretty silly, too.

Side note 2: Mono played Lavery’s Bunker in Belfast last year, and I was so staggered by the boringness of it all that I went and sat alone in the back bar. Niall Harden

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DOWNLOAD: ‘THE BATTLE TO HEAVEN’.
FOR FANS OF: YNDI HALDA, SIGUR RÓS.

Posted on: March 31, 2009