Review: Reissue of The Monochrome Set's 'The Lost Weekend'

The Monochrome Set were still with Cherry Red when they cut what would be the final album of the first part of their career. Although the recordings were made on Cherry Red’s dime in 1983, the Warner Brothers subsidiary Blanco y Negro would not release the album until 1985. By that point, The Monochrome Set seemed to be winding down anyway, not doing much of anything in 1984. Those were not happy times for The Monochrome Set, though the LP released as The Lost Weekend is pretty jolly. The band was understandably frustrated by how their new label bungled the timing of their first single on it. “Jacob’s Ladder” was getting good radio play, but since the single was not in shops yet, the promotional engine pooped out before anyone could buy it. This is one of the odder points of the Lost Weekend story, since “Jacob’s Ladder”—a trivial fusion of Brit-Pop and gospel—hardly seems like the stuff hits are made of. The band would have done well to relinquish hopes for commercial success and keep the song’s original lyrics, which bandleader Bid says described intercourse in pornographic detail. So the track ends up sounding like a parody that never gets around to the joke.

Fortunately, The Monochrome Set’s unique humor is present throughout much of the rest of The Lost Weekend. Their pop craft is strong too, with wry nods to reggae (“Sugar Plum”), tango (“Cargo”), sixties dance craze discs (“The Twitch”, “Boom Boom”), fifties ballads (the hilarious “Letter from Viola”, which recounts the true story of the unflattering Mohawk haircut that cost guitarist James Foster his girlfriend), and psychedelia (the enchanting “Cowboy Country”).

The Lost Weekend ultimately landed back with Cherry Red, which put out an extended edition of the album in 2009. The bonus tracks are mostly instrumental B-sides, though “Le Boom Boom” is notable for being a superior mix (with added female vocals) of the LP’s “Boom Boom”. “Yo Ho Ho” is notable for being the only track The Monochrome Set recorded specifically for Blanco y Negro and for sounding suspiciously like John Cale’s “Ghost Ship”. Mat Smyth’s quiet remastering requires the listener to really crank it up. That’s a nice consideration in an age when too few engineers trust listeners to work the volume knobs on their stereos. Cherry Red has just reissued its 2009 edition of The Lost Weekend. 

Review: 'Scared to Get Happy: A Story of Indie-Pop 1980-1989'

The British punk movement of the late seventies was just the thing to flush out pop’s veins. But as brilliant as it was, punk had its limitations, and the genre’s most enduring acts—The Clash, The Damned, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Jam, etc.—quickly went in interesting directions that led them far from their lo-fi, two-chord origins when the eighties began.

At that very time, a new movement was born in Britain, one that picked up on punk’s minimalism and lack of fidelity, but didn’t necessarily share its sneering attack. If it was sometimes as nihilistic as punk, it was a lot more resigned about it. In years to come, this movement would be known as indie-pop and its guiding light that never goes out was The Smiths (who, like the original punks, absolutely worshipped The New York Dolls). While The Smiths’ influence is very detectable in many of the 134 tracks on last year’s Scared to Get Happy: A Story of Indie-Pop 1980-1989, and that title certainly seems to suggest a rather dour affair, you’d be wrong to think this box set was just a great, big, five-disc mope. In fact, there is a thrilling variety of styles and moods dancing inside this wonderful sampler. “Getting Nowhere Fast” by Girls At Our Best! is punk by any definition of the term. “The Jet Set Junta” by the divine Monochrome Set has a spaghetti western under taste and is as danceable as the best of sixties garage rock. Jane’s a cappella “It’s a Fine Day” is a defining example of twee. There’s psychedelia, Latin rhythms, hypno-noise, loungey crooning, jangling, jingling, and jostling.

The selection is also smart because while the point of sets like this is always to turn you on to obscure artists like Girls at Our Best! Grab Grab the Haddock, Close Lobsters, Gol Gappas, and Bad Dream Fancy Dress (who may win the best track award with their insane, genre-hoping freak show “Choirboys Gas [Hack the Cassock]”), there are enough familiar artists—The Jesus & Mary Chain, Josef K, Everything But the Girl, Pulp, Aztec Camera, Television Personalities, Primal Scream, Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets, The La’s— to provide numerous paths in. Even cooler, most of these groups are represented by obscure early, demo, and live tracks, so there’s always something to discover.

The only knock against Scared to Get Happy is its allegedly innovative packaging, which requires you to pull required a visit to a YouTube video in order to figure out how to get the discs out of the damn box. Make sure you watch that video, kids, and be very, very careful. These are discs you do not want to scratch.