This monkey could swallow the universe
Review
Monkey Swallows the Universe
Anyone who has indulged in a wholesome rock & roll crush – whether Debbie Harry or Courtney Love, Nina Persson or Shirley Manson – will find Monkey Swallows the Universe in concert hard going. It isn’t just that Catherine Tully on violin gets in the way of enjoying a traditionally juvenile fixation towards front-woman Nat Johnson. It’s also, well, the music.
The Graeme Mearns Band, opening for MSTU at Cabaret Voltaire, presents no such problems, as one has Graeme – think: Edinburgh threw up Jamiroquai and Old Gregg’s love child – and a Phil Mitchell lookalike on the bongos to choose between.
There was, incidentally, an earlier opening act – Gavin Gordon – but I was up the road in the pub.
Graeme Mearns & co. have been called “demonic” before, and in the vaulted cavern of Cab Vol’s dance floor one can readily imagine flames licking the rough stone walls as Beelzebub bangs the handle of his pitchfork on the ceiling of his downstairs flat, shouting at Graeme to keep the noise down.
He doesn’t; instead he keeps grinding out a blend of rock and funk, languid at times, percussive at others. There are perhaps too many influences to pick the band’s own sound out of, but the cool is sufficiently constant for the hellfire and brimstone to be doused in time for the far more earthly – if not wholly angelic – Monkey Swallows the Universe.
With a myriad instruments punctuating Johnson’s near-flawless bedtime-voice delivery, MSTU could be the New Pornographers if their feet weren’t so firmly planted on the ground. The weird recorders and glockenspiels haven’t blasted them into orbit; lyrics to numbers like ‘Little Polveir’ and ‘Martin’ remain accessible while being genuinely affecting.
In particular, ‘Science’ – one of two singles from their 2007 album The Casket Letters – stands out as the most subtle protest song I’ve ever heard. It’s got the best cello riff since Bach, and if the Green Party ever picks it up as an anti-climate change anthem, it will sweep them into 10 Downing Street faster than you can say “things can only get better.”
Formed by Johnson and musical polymath Kevin Gori at Sheffield University, the quintet – filled out by Tully, cellist Andy George and Rob Dean on drums – spent last year on tour in support of fellow home-towners The Long Blondes, and a similar Northern gumption runs through tunes like ‘Chicken Fat Waltz’ and ‘Matterhoney’.
As my Cumbrian companion informs me, they are “thoroughly Sheffield,” and the same local colour that inspired Robert Carlyle to get his kit off in The Full Monty means that the set includes ghost stories, historical references to Mary Queen of Scots, charity shop labels still attached to clothes, and balloons thrown into the audience.
Best of all, however, is the treat at the end – a rendition of ‘Ice Cream Man’ so utterly tasty that I still haven’t worked out if it was supposed to be a remix of Jonathan Richman, Tom Waits or Van Halen. It even had a bit of dirty French thrown in, so could reasonably have been inspired by Master P.
Their creativity is matched by the completeness of their sound; the music is simply so full you don’t think there would be room to cram any more goodness in. It irks that MSTU’s brand of folk folded into indie isn’t more commercial, because their appeal is – forgive the pun – universal. They wouldn’t have to change a dot to pull in crowds and still appeal to their hardened fans.
Then my crush could be legitimated. Nat, call me.
Cabaret Voltaire, Monday 11 February
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