18 Monkeys On A Dead Man's Chest

David Thomas & two pale boys | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 19, 2004)
• Original Release Date: October 19, 2004
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Smog Veil Records
• ASIN: B00036H6N0
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #401,101 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

The Sunday Times, London

Ceaselessly inventive!

They deconstruct musical forms and let them flow into strange, beautiful new shapes.

BBC Album of the Week.

Product Description

David Thomas and the two pale boys generate strange and beautiful new shapes, rolling stories, and sonic panoramas out of spontaneous deconstructions created with brass, guitar and electronics. The simple seesawing of a melodeon gives way to cascading electronica and expressionistic soundscapes-- sometimes pulsating and abrasive, sometimes mysterious and exploratory. Through it all is woven the mordant wit of one of the most distinctive and charismatic singers in modern music, Pere Ubu founder David Thomas, the trademark soundscaping of electronic trumpeter Andy Diagram and guitar/synthesist Keith Moliné, and injects it with a furious rock urgency.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well.....it's David Thomas, what more can I say?, January 16, 2005

By 

B. Kemper "Buzz" (Madison, WI United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 18 Monkeys On A Dead Man's Chest (Audio CD)

Let's face it: It is rather silly to review a David Thomas & TPB CD because the faithful--myself included--like him and everyone else is going to hear it as a ridiculous excuse for music, led by a singer who has been sucking too much helium between takes. So here's the deal: If you like Pere Ubu, or just fancy yourself to have an open mind to music that is "outside the box", give this a listen; if not, then buy another Dave Matthews Band album and have fun humming along. To the fans, know that this CD doesn't break any new ground for this band. It is what we have come to expect and love and I for one will get hours of listening enjoyment from it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Looking to go pale., July 6, 2005

By 

Brett Lemke (www.maximumink.com) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 18 Monkeys On A Dead Man's Chest (Audio CD)

David Thomas' creative brainchild borders on the very strange; looping drum lines and beats over his disconnected and demonic vocals. Thomas sends effects swirling around the room, not sparing any vibrato, and makes eloquent use of the effects on Melodeon and Musette. Keith Moline's guitar lines are wonderfully interconnected with the cacophony, giving the listener an ominous feeling of impending doom. Not forgetting the horn player, Andy Diagram's trumpets provide an ambient tone reminding one of "Bitches Brew" by Miles Davis. "New Orleans Fuzz" follows a 12-bar with loops, and even captures a bit of the Cajun city's Creole rhythms on record. "Nebraska Alcohol Abuse" leaves no questions in the listeners mind, but the absence of a band throughout the record intrigues as to what the Two Pale Boys would be like live. [...]

5.0 out of 5 stars Avant Garde Nostalgia, December 12, 2008

By 

Ashley Crawford "Ashley Crawford" (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 18 Monkeys On A Dead Man's Chest (Audio CD)

For an artist who is at heart an avant gardist (a term of course he would perversely refute), David Thomas' melancholy for the past hovers brutally in the albums he has executed with The Two Pale Boys - Keith Moliné and Andy Diagram; especially Surf's Up and 18 Monkey's On A Dead Man's Chest.

In 1997, in their wisdom, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation decided to demolish a 109-year old bridge. In 2001 Thomas wreaked his revenge.

As Thomas notes in the Surf's Up chapter titled River, the Department put up a sign signifying the bridges ghost:
"Between 1888-1997, a 158 foot single-span pratt thru truss metal bridge crossed French Creek at this location. The Bridge was named the `Wilson Shute Bridge' after Robert Wilson, an early settle along the banks of French Creek. The pin-connected bridge was built by the Penn Bridge Company of Beaver Falls, PA to provice access to the local Pennsylvania agricultural network." - Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

But it did little to appease the behemoth. The bass is relentless on the River while the air around it swirls like a dervish on acid. The thudding recalls the heart-beat of Edgar Allan-Poe's The Tell Tale Heart: "It was a low, dull, quick sound - much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton." Poe's character has, of course, committed a heinous crime, the killing of an old man, like the killing of an old bridge. As Moline plays, Thomas, like Poe, wreaks his revenge.

It starts with a clarion call, a muted emergency. Thomas on melodeon and Diagram on trumpet create a funereal ambience that is seductive in its melancholy. Thomas's use of the melodeon is yet another moment of nostalgia - A melodeon, also known as a cabinet organ or American organ, is a type of 19th century reed organ with a foot-operated vacuum bellows, and a piano keyboard. It was first manufactured in 1854 - 34 years before the Wilson-Shute was built - by Mason & Hamlin of Boston, Massachusetts.

The bass comes in just as Thomas announces, in a warbling, tremulous voice, the source of this lament: "They tore down the Wilson-Shute last year."

The populace, zombie like, have drifted into town: "Their faces are haunted, although they'll swear it's swell.
Their faces are haunted, their hearts have gone to hell."

The ramifications of destroying this moment of history have altered the very fabric of nature:
"The river is bloated.
It looks like pasty flesh.
The moon's a greasy spot upon the sky.
The crops of corn slope into muddy graves,
and the weeds grow pale and glow in dark of night."

The song that follows, Ghosts, pursues the implosion of the township, but this time Thomas inserts himself into the narrative:

And I'm headed into another black coffee dawn.
Nights like this I feel the weight of history,
and I hear somebody explaining it in my ear up close -
all these obligations.
The coffee cup -
that one with the lipstick stain -
is on my mind.
A dried coffee ring, a ring around the moon,
and neon in a haze.

The dreams and hopes of the past lie decimated, replaced by exhaustion and hurt. By allowing their history to be removed the townsfolk are left in fear, floating in a ghost town, the solidity of the deceased metal bridge gone they are cut off from their roots.

Such nostalgia is a peculiarly American phenomena. In Europe ancient bridges and buildings are a living history. America, at least in terms of white settlement, remains a young place, so much so that a 109-year-old bridge is practically prehistoric. This sense of the past and the resonance of place infuses Thomas' lyrics. On the same album, on Come Home*Green River he sees this guy in a hardware store in Green River, Utah. He's "paddling his hands in bins of nails.
Like he was playing at some keyboard.
Like he was listening to something far away."

What he is hearing are the "voices of his brothers in the hills,
all them bones of worlds gone by -
time-blasted and sun wearied."

In desperation he takes to his car, blasting the air-conditioning and keeping the windows tight to escape the voices of the past. Of course he never quite escapes. Like Poe's character in The Tell Tale Heart, the more he drives the louder the voices get. By refusing to come home, home becomes an ever-haunting presence.

The road is an ongoing theme in Thomas' work. The remarkably poetic Golden Surf on 18 Monkeys is perhaps his most poignant and romantic moment to date. In its tone it is remarkably akin to the writings of Steve Erickson in such novels as Our Ecstatic Days . Thomas is in seduce mode, despite the inclusion of the Pynchonian "Firefly mothman" on the road (which has to be right up there with Iggy Pop's "Radio Birdman" or "Zombie Birdhouse"), this is a deeply romantic moment.

Which is just as well, because the finale of the album is a train wreck - literally.