Labels: Mon Oeil
Review by: Oli Saunders
After discovering Mon Oeil recently this is the second offering of theirs that I am reviewing. I only found out about the label and the records they’ve put out via Gareth and I’m extremely happy that I did. So a few people in Québec are making some cool emo that clearly has influences from the classic US and Canadian bands from the nineties. It is not as good it would be fair to say but I don’t mind and maybe at some point some of them will make something that’s really special. This and the La Maladresse record are both pretty solid and it’s important to me to always hear new things, so I’m satisfied anyway.
Nine songs in thirteen minutes, I would compare Monocycle with La Maladresse in that the vocals are in French and the music again sounds a bit different from the modern French bands who tend to copy each others jangly guitar sound. Mon Oeil describe them as decadent and abrasive punk, but to me it’s definitely modern emo. Vocals are a bit Bökanövsky like, another similarity is that their songs are also very short. The guitar is pretty different though, it’s not got the heavy groove that La Maladresse has but then again there is now a bass guitar in the background to drive things along. Instead it is pretty chaotic, changing pitch all over the place. Definitely some nice riffs going on here.
Tracks one to three have a similar sort of sound and are my favourites. They are respectively named ‘Misère’, ‘Espoir’ and ‘Révolte’. Track four then sounds quite different, despite being recorded at the same time it is louder and more aggressive. Works well still but just doesn’t flow with the first three songs (edit: just found out that this is because it a thirty second song that was on the Emo Apocalypse compilation, that explains it). Track five looks like it was the bands first recording, it’s weaker than the earlier tracks, though by no means bad. Finally, there are four tracks recorded live which don’t get the recording quality they deserve and I doubt I’ll listen to regularly whenever I play this record. The band have split up so I imagine they didn’t want to record the songs properly but still wanted to release them. It’s fair enough and people who have seen the band live will probably appreciate them more. It’s just a shame that the recording quality is so poor and you can’t really enjoy the songs to anywhere near their full extent.
In summary, I really like half of this record, it’s definitely worth checking out. And I’m definitely gonna keep an eye on this label from now on in this small but productive scene. I’ve not sure when this record actually came out but the songs are all from 2005.
16th July 2009