MUSIC GUIDE
Joe Carnall JNR
Little Mono
Diamond Live Lounge, Friday 11th December 2015
Sailing Songs Album Review
Joe Carnall Jnr has maintained a loyal fan base throughout his career whether that be fronting Milburn and The Book Club or as the bassist in Reverend And The Makers. It makes sense then that Carnall Jnr has now chosen to go down the path of being a solo artist albeit backed by a full band.
I can’t quite put my finger on what sets Little Mono apart from the pack. A band from a mining town in South Yorkshire certainly layering on the mine-shaft deep riffs and tapping the rich seams of coal-black humour from around these parts. But there’s so much more to these boys.
Joe Carnall Jnr is the latest in a slew of impressive acts to feature at the Doncaster Diamond Live Lounge including Space and Frankie & The Heartstrings and as the Sheffield singer/songwriter opened up with a storming rendition of Captain Hook it was clear this was to be another good night. Carnall Jnr’s emergence as a solo artist is reminiscent of Gaz Coombes brilliant solo work in as much as both artists have broken free of the shackles of Milburn and Supergrass respectively to produce something fresh and new. This is never more apparent than on second track Avenue, a stomping piano led ballad with a hook laden chorus. A well-received Sharpshooter follows before The Boy Who Was Struck By Lightning has the Doncaster crowd clapping along. At this point the band leave the stage as Carnall Jnr treats the crowd to a couple of acoustic songs including a version of Milburn favourite Cheshire Cat Smile, complete with dodgy backing vocals from the audience. Joe jokes that normally the band would go backstage but as there is no such area in Live Lounge they will just have to stand and watch. The band return for a triumphant run through of excellent new single Three Things, which encapsulates Carnall Jnr’s Simon and Garfunkel influenced folk sound before crowd favourite Times New Roman - probably the only love song about fonts. By the time the last notes of set closer Haunted have finished it is clear that whether it is with Milburn, The Book Club or as a solo act, Joe Carnall Jnr means business. His album is due to drop next year. Don’t miss it. Rob Johnson
Originally, music room chums at the local comp, Little Mono have become a collective of sorts led by songwriter and Jarvis Cocker doppleganger, Vincent Marsh, and co-writer and partner in crime, Joe Hirst. A few years of honing and refining through heavy rehearsals led to this deepest and darkest, earworm of a debut album, Sailing Songs, recorded earlier this year but scheduled for release in early 2016. Opening track Vivid spills its hardcore guts from the outset. A sinewy coiling riff in the manner of Washington’s finest, Fugazi. It’s short, sharp, floor-tom driven and with to-die-for swooning vocals. It is over way too soon. Then there’s the dubcentric Kites that deceives with its light upstrokes of chiming synth-like guitar, before the distorted wave of typically mono-esque guitars come crashing in. The voices are hazy and shoegazey, for want of a better term: strike that, gauzy, translucent and harmonic. Getting high and feeling the down side, all washed up and nowhere to grow... Propeller shows how catchy this outfit can be with a skewed nod to 50’s doo wop and aviation as escapism with a spiralling tailspin down to earth at the coda. I pause to catch my breath. A Shining Path could be Wire and Sugar’s lovechild in it’s churning chord structure. Brutal and beautiful at the same time. The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog was the first thing I heard by LM when I saw them at Sheffield’s MADE @ The Audacious Art Experiment, and still remains a personal favourite. Blinding Light took 10 minutes to create but years to perfect, this is where the Marsh/Hirst sonic explorations really comes into its own. It is a joyous primal scream, dancing phosphenes of neo-psychedelia, dissolving into an seething mess of feedback and atonality after five mins of melodic bliss. Sailing Songs seems to be about being lost and found, washed up but triumphant, cold to the touch but warm of heart, and precision-tooled to ebb and flow, too short - at 30 minutes - but guaranteed to remain on your turntable for most of the coming months. That is until Songs of the Bewildered (Little Mono’s sophomore album) comes along in the new year. Can’t wait for more black stuff from these boys. Sven Dali
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