Monday In London
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"The Red Machine" (Indianola Records) Rock
A mess of emotionally taut guitars, shimmering and crashing as they combust against the vocal soundscape's jagged descents and soaring heights, opens the door to Monday In London's (MIL) debut "The Red Machine." Bridging the gap between At the Drive-In and Coheed and Cambria, MIL's members - Tanner Cardwell (vocals), Sterling Plemmons (guitar, vocals), Daniel Allen (guitar, piano), John Brehm (bass) and Robbie Adkins (drums) - have fused two of the most intriguing bands to create a unique yet universal sound.
Formed two and a half years ago from the ashes of bands from the incestuous N.C. scene, MIL's debut shows how five separate parts can come together and independently add infinitely to the musical mix of a genre. Walking the outskirts of pop, hard rock, art-punk and metal as nimbly as a 20-ton elephant, "The Red Machine" works more like penicillin than Dimetapp because it satiates a number of needs yet is not something everybody can use.
While MIL's music can best be defined by Cardwell's frenzied vocals (which waver on falsetto almost as much as they land in the pop pool) and Adkins' attention-deficit drumming (which randomly walks between up-tempo jazz riffs on the high hat to full on pummel), the lyrical content of the record treads on the omnibus emotion of love.
Cardwell's lyrics, though directed at one relationship, hold common truths.
"Tanner [Cardwell] was just really honest and wrote how he really felt," said Plemmons in an interview with The Eagle. "And I think he said a lot of things on the record that a lot of people think when they are in that situation [but] they just never say them."
And it is true - the lyrics of "The Red Machine" definitely conjure up common concepts.
On the chorus of "Lie to Me Baby," Cardwell beckons his former lover by saying, "Lie to me baby/And I'll let you get away with it," creating an all too chilling image of someone struggling with the loss of something needed, all too willing to accept that need in any form. On "A Good Friend, A Worse Enemy," Cardwell laments further on the loss of love as he details writing songs about an ex. "It doesn't matter/ what they say about her" Cardwell exclaims, because, "Their lives have been shattered/On the stage of desire." These lyrics memorialize the end of a connection based in reality - love - which is replaced by a fiction, because the connection between the two is so dispersed and broken that the memories become nothing more than stories.
The one place where the album seems to stumble into a sort of mid-air suspension is on "Acting Surgeon." An instrumental track on a record that is made so unique partly because of its vocalist's range, feels like a mistake. According to Plemmons, "[Acting Surgeon] was the last thing we wrote for the album, just kind of messing around, and [we] needed somewhat of an intermission. Seemed like it just fit."
However, on an album where Cardwell's vocal variety is so provocative, it comes off as mere filler.
