MONEYBROTHER – Mount Pleasure

(CD, Burning Heart)

That Moneybrother is a master of disguising influences. I wonder why nobody ever noticed on how much he sounds like other great artists, and I don’t mean one comparison per review, but a concise list of all the things you can find in his music that are taken one by one. But the main paradox is that he also sounds great. Really fucking great. On the other hand, all those producers that use samples and loops are deemed genius, like Timbaland or the Neptunes, and why shouldn’t that be possible in rock music as well? Is “borrowing” and “being influenced” something only black musicians are allowed to do? And finally, a certain amount of taking of the ones who came before you is there in all music. Remember when the Rolling Stones started? Or Rap? Or anything else? But Moneybrother is breathing in and digesting these styles a lot more obvious and upfront than others. He is not searching for his own style, it seems, but rather letting his own style evolve from what comes out from the inside by deciding what goes into it first.

And taking into account his history as a white, young punkrocker, I’d say that the only possible or legitimate comparison to take him for is Willy DeVille. But let’s take this one by one. During the most songs on the overall wonderfull and gripping collection of songs that is “Mount Pleasure” he sings like the young Joe Strummer. Even on “Any other heart” which is musically and from the arrangement a bland take on the best songs on “Darkness on the edge of town” by Bruce Springsteen (whose new album I am also eagerly awaiting, but that is a whole different story) he peruses that same noodling, somehow bored yet at the same time fully inflected nasal vocal style of the late Clash leader. Then there is a song like the ballad duet with Ane Brun “It might as well be now” where he is stealing melody-lines from “People just ain’t no good” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds as if nobody ever heard that record.  Next on would be “Just another summer” where he mixes the big blasts of “Born to Run” (again Springsteen) with the pop-agility of the young Elvis Costello. And so on, the list is long and winding and leads you through the best moments of rock history. The parts that are being sold at Saturn for less than ten euros per CD (except for Elvis Costello unfortunately). The parts that are still moving and rocking after decades and make all the current music production and popstars so superficial and exchangable and meaningless.

Is “Mount Pleasure” therefore a bad album? Not at all. It is a fucking great album. It is a relief, a fulfillment and a promise. It takes you on this travel through the best times, the worst times, the edge of the night where the party is and the life is most intense. It is not extreme and not extremist, but it is extremely moving. Maybe because in each song he takes the right twists and turns at exactly the moment where you feel you’ve put the finger on where the song comes from, only to end up at another just as beautiful and gripping place. The best of all worlds, is what makes this album like a good friend, which is an attribute that music has lost some years ago (due to the rise of the internet) and it is probably by and for people who are more interested in music than anything else. Real music, that has songs with meaning and melody, not an endless rhyme of Umbrella, ella, ella, ella, ad nauseam. And Moneybrother and his gang really take it off, they are able to fulfill the promise. He may be “just a white punk trying to sing like a soul singer” in his own definition, but he might be the resolve of rock music the way it has been when it was still good.

Maybe that is why the Moneybrother is torn and bruised, leaning on crutches on the cover, in a colour arrangement that makes him look like a wounded veteran of the first world war. Because he has been through ages and ages of rock records, album stacking second hand boxes on flea markets and selling for a few bucks cheap, fighting with them to reap the best moments and best feelings, to condense them and record them onto his own platter. And now there are eleven songs on here, none of which is a filler or a bad song. Each of them has something special, a hook, an idea, a melody, that grips you. I listen to this album twice a day currently at least. And that happened last with “Coup de Grace” by Mink DeVille (who is not the brother of Willy DeVille, as one infosheet used to tell me some time ago...) and that was a re-release. I wonder how many people will discover Moneybrother in the decades to come.

By the way: this is the first songblog-entry that turned into a whole review.