Saturday, September 29, 2007

Album Review: "Mount Pleasure" - Moneybrother

Rather ironic (don't you think) that I went to Germany and ended up coming home with a Swedish CD. Turns out that Anders Wendin and his merry men had a lot of success in Germany in 2005 and continue to be very popular there. This is Moneybrother's 3rd English-language CD and if it ain't broke don't fix it. You know that you're not going to get techno, or r'n'b, or bland acoustic ballads. No no no. Moneybrother's formula is melodic uptempo rock filled with fire, urgency and intensity. Think Springsteen's "Born To Run" with a bit of The Clash thrown in and you're almost there.

"Guess Who's Gonna Get Some Tonight" kicks the album off with typical urgency and fighting talk - a very good start, leading into "Down At The R" which has a bit of a David Bowie/Abba(!) 70s vibe about it. "Just Another Summer" was the first Moneybrother song I heard and it's still great. Other tracks I'd recommend here are "It Is Time For Falling Apart", "Any Other Heart" and "Will There Be Music". You could argue that most of the time, Moneybrother's songs are variations on the same musical theme, but I really don't mind when it's this good, melodic, memorable and nostalgic in a really good way. It doesn't scream "2007" but who would want it to? Would we really want Moneybrother to start playing Blunt-style dreary-pop, or start rapping? Frankly, no.

According to Anders Wendin, "Mount Pleasure" was inspired by a particularly good time in his life: and the feelgood factor is certainly alive and well on this album.

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