Nothing quite does it the way a loose, lo-fi, straight-to-tape indie rock LP does it; the spontaneity, the crooked melodies, the eerie mosquito tape hiss; corners of contained chaos and busted speakers. The grainy, impulsive joy of such albums is so familiar to me from a childhood of taping Peel sessions, buying second-hand 7”s in hand-drawn sleeves, and sending off for mail-order cassettes. The occasional smash and grab from the outside edges into the popular market… a young Beck, still a child, his horseplay with Thurston Moore on MTV. J Mascis is soloing over the credits on The Word. It’s a genre I love – and it’s a transportive, fuzzy pleasure when it lands.
Brother of Monday have already made one LP – 2023’s self-titled Brother of Monday, and this follow-up, Humdinger, is full of treats. It’s pretty impulsive stuff; enjoyably energetic, trebly pop songs which sound frazzled and untameable, melancholy and often melodically slight until a crunchy, uplifting solo arrives, doubling the volume of the song.
Each time I listen (first on my headphones in the middle of the night, then on the train, then in a tent camping in a freezing and starry Cornwall night) I pick out moments that remind me a bit of, I dunno, Sebadoh or Sammy or Guided by Voices, and it’s lovely to have such a familiar and fuzzy roll-coll of artists spilling into my peripheral hearing.
The album is heavy on atmosphere and crackle; sacrificing practised choruses for unrehearsed hooks. The spirit of the songs kind of run into one another, a feeling which is heightened by the lyrics, which take a rich and slightly queasy pleasure in compounds, cliches and vernacular speech – “buckeyed broncos”, “saneville”, “for the win”. I’d struggle to tell you what any of the songs are about, but there’s a pervading interest in drink-soggy, tear-stained misunderstandings, moments of regret and missed opportunities. As I listen I think in particular of card tables and sunk cash; “A hundred-dollar move with a five-dollar finish”.
It’s unclear whether Peter Bothum – the Delaware-based songwriter behind Brother Of Monday – has spent much time at the gambling table itself (“trading all the queens for twos”) or simply likes it as ametaphor, but he sure seems to understand loss. “You can lose more than your coat”, he notes, “When you’ve got so much to gain”. With loss comes culpability, and there’s plenty of that too – “If it’s all the same I’ll take the blame”, he sings on the album’s title track, ‘Humdinger’, which is a real beauty.
The album’s fourth song, ‘Sixto’, is perhaps the record’s loveliest moment, offering a delightful change of pace from tumbling guitars and churning bass; to a stately, mournful piano refrain looping around while the song glides into a lovey, low and softly-sung lament in which Bothum wonders whether or not to “spread the pain”. It has me thinking of the superlative ‘Winner’s Blues’ – itself a surprising jewel – by Sonic Youth.
If the album has a shortcoming it’s that it’s a little shy of formal hooks, but ‘Book of Buck’ yields sticky melodies and a kind of detached geeky energy, while ‘Gomer’ has the loveliest, noisiest solo you’ll hear for a good while – blissful unwinding fuzz with traces of Graham Coxon’s Mascis-apeing playing in Blur’s intimate miniature ‘You’re So Great’.
This enjoyable, indistinct, slow-unfolding album is well worth a listen; listening is to embark on a kind of sensory time travel. Plug in and play, let the tape run.
Written by Jonathan Shipley