“Say Please”
from the album Monsters of Folk
2009
iTunes
Monsters of Folk are already being called this generation’s Traveling Wilburys, but a better comparison is Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Like CSNY, Monsters of Folk yoke together a quartet of folk-minded rockers [Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis of Bright Eyes, M. Ward of She & Him] at the top of their game — and both groups create something that’s often greater than the sum of its parts.
For one thing, there are the harmonies, which step fearlessly into the arena just as harmony singing has become the coin of the realm (see Fleet Foxes, Grizzly Bear, etc.). James’, Oberst’s, and Ward’s voices meld beautifully in a variety of styles: Check the Meet the Beatles-style belting on “Say Please” or the “Teach Your Children” vocal timbres on “Map of the World.” Ward’s mythic Americana spurs campfire-song playfulness on “Goodway” and “Baby Boomer,” while James’ current obsession with classic soul briefly turns the group into a trip-hop Four Tops on “Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.).”
But the most striking thing, especially given the punch-line band name, is the quality and cohesiveness of the material. James, Oberst and Ward get to sing lead on five tracks each, and though any individual authorship is cloaked under collective writing credits, their signature styles stand out like scents in a Southern Italian kitchen. Ward owns “The Sandman, the Brakeman and Me,” an ageless hobo lullaby that may be his most perfectly turned song to date. Oberst’s verses on “Temazcal” — “The love we made at gunpoint wasn’t love at all/They’re dancing in the valley, the moon is the mirror ball” — epitomize his damaged-drifter persona. “Losin Yo Head” is an outsize My Morning Jacket-style rocker, complete with hollered vocals, sizzling high-hats and a guitar solo, albeit a minimalist one. Much credit for everything holding together must go to sound scientist/multi-instrumentalist Mogis, who takes a vocal back seat but plays everything from pedal steel and mandolin to Wurlitzer keyboard and bongos.
Monsters is not a concept record, but strong themes course through it. God is one: Oberst recalls a lost time when “God was on our side”; Ward tells the Lord he’s “gotta lotta losing.” And the record closes with James’ beautifully assonant image of “Mohammed rolling dice with Christ at twilight” in “His Master’s Voice,” a song about spiritual belief, self-determination and “the call to war.”
Individual excesses crop up occasionally; Oberst’s warning to “don’t never buy nothing from a man named Truth,” for instance, feels like slightly overcooked spaghetti-Western existentialism. Like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, there is a political consciousness here, but it’s a little mushy: “We don’t agree about September,” sings Ward on “Baby Boomer,” in an apparent reference to the 9/11 conspiracy debate. “Can we agree on Vietnam?” But most often, the four folkies keep each other focused. Everyone shines — although James, whose lead vocals open and close the set, beams brightest, the eclecticism of My Morning Jacket’s 2008 opus, Evil Urges, brought into sharper focus by the company. Sometimes too many cooks are precisely enough.