Dublin is the latest offering from No Monster Club, an outfit made up of three parts Grand Pocket Orchestra and fronted by the enigmatic Bobby Aherne. A wild and noisy mish-mash of genres, the album’s ten tracks veer from psychadelic to punk, to all-out musical free-for-all. Says the man himself: “This is an album of just two choruses, as it is one which favours progression and unpredictability over structure and repetition.”
There’s method to the madness, though. While he may indeed shun the classic song structure (six of the ten tracks fall under the two-minute mark), Aherne has nonetheless created a distinctive and wonderfully summery lo-fi sound. Distorted to within an inch of its life, Dublin could well have been dreamt up on some lovely ‘70s acid trip. Album opener ‘Uncle Porky’ and current single ‘Be My Bone’ perfectly merge catchy pop melodies, spiky vocals and thrashing reverbed guitars. ‘Waking My Idols’ meanwhile is surf rock at its finest. Unsurprisingly (though still pretty odd) the No Monster Club sound has apparently “amassed a cult following amongst the bleach-haired Australian sect, soundtracking several acclaimed surf movies.” As you do.
If I may, I’ll let Bobby summarise – “This is an album about life, death, love, hate, friends, enemies, history, the future, freedom, constriction, losing yourself, finding yourself, trying to be a hero but ending up a villain, and trying to make a good album.” Or maybe not. How about: this is very good stuff indeed.